


For the Longest Time

by darlingred1



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Sex, Comeplay, Coming Untouched, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fingerfucking, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pet Names, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Safewords, Service Switch, Switching, Teasing, light humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 08:40:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20543285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingred1/pseuds/darlingred1
Summary: “You…” Aziraphale sounded baffled, and suddenly quite sober. “You liked that? But, my dear, you said it was torturous. ‘Six thousand years of torture,’ as I recall.”“Yeah. Yeah, but the anticipation, and the yearning, and…and how every moment with you was so maddeningly intense, and…”And what else could Crowley say? How could he expect Aziraphale to understand that after six thousand years of torture he’d actually got a bit used to it? That he’d felt like a band strained further and further, and now he found himself permanently stretched, flopping about with too much slack and no way to hold on to what he’d been reaching towards for so long?(Crowley kind of misses the pining when it's gone. Aziraphale comes up with a solution.)





	For the Longest Time

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, that is a PWP tag you see on a 20K fic. There's a skeleton of a plot here, but honestly it's just a frame for me to slather porn on top of. Staying loyal to my brand, what can I say?

“D’ya ever miss it?” Crowley said, and wished immediately that he could take it back.

He blamed his loose tongue on the wine and on Aziraphale’s presence, which was just as intoxicating and inhibition-erasing as anything Crowley could put in his body. Especially now. No more head offices breathing down their necks, no more Arrangement, no more pretending Aziraphale wasn’t the light of his dark, dank little demonic existence.

Crowley had cracked the lid on quite a number of things he probably shouldn’t have over the last few months, in circumstances just like this one. Swaying closer to tipsy than sober, lying on the sofa that he’d conjured in his flat because Aziraphale had whinged about the lack of comfortable seating. His head in Aziraphale’s lap, because that was where Crowley liked it best and Aziraphale had developed a still-blossoming fondness for stroking Crowley’s hair during their contented, wine-soft evenings together.

“Hm?” said Aziraphale. His fingers raked deliciously across Crowley’s scalp.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Aziraphale’s hands paused. “’S not nothing. Do I miss what?”

“Dun remember. Must not be important.”

“_Crowley_.”

Crowley closed his eyes. It took some concentration, unnatural as it was for eyes like his. “Just…y’know. Before.”

“Before what?”

Crowley turned his head into Aziraphale’s stomach and muttered, “Us.”

“Us?” For Satan’s sake, Aziraphale was just going to repeat everything he said. “Before we were on Earth?”

Crowley squinted one eye open, glaring up at Aziraphale. He was usually so good at gleaning Crowley’s meaning without Crowley having to say it. Perhaps the wine had been a bit stronger than usual.

Then Aziraphale’s confusion cleared. “Oh. Oh, I see. Before this, you mean.” He gestured at them both, cuddling on the sofa, utterly shameless in their affection for each other. “Why would I miss that?”

Crowley grimaced, burying his face into Aziraphale’s waistcoat, wishing he could simply hide himself away until he could manage to shut his gob for a while. “Not _miss_. Just…you know. The wanting, and the not getting, and the waiting…it was…something. Dunno.”

With any luck, his voice would be too muffled and unintelligible and Aziraphale would decide not to press the issue.

But of course Crowley’s luck had always been shit.

“You…” Aziraphale sounded baffled, and suddenly quite sober. “You _liked_ that? But, my dear, you said it was torturous. ‘Six thousand years of torture,’ as I recall.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but the anticipation, and the yearning, and…and how every moment with you was so maddeningly intense, and…”

And what else could Crowley say? How could he expect Aziraphale to understand that after six thousand years of torture he’d actually got a bit used to it? That he’d felt like a band strained further and further, and now he found himself permanently stretched, flopping about with too much slack and no way to hold on to what he’d been reaching towards for so long?

“Intense,” Aziraphale echoed. “Maddeningly intense yearning. Hmm.”

He returned to stroking Crowley’s hair, almost idly at first and then with clear purpose. He found the sensitive bit just above Crowley’s nape as easily as if he’d pitched a flag there and scratched gently but firmly. Soon Crowley was hissing and lolling his head back, lost in the sheer pleasure of it.

“Do you know,” said Aziraphale, “I might be able to do something about that.”

“Not gonna…” Crowley couldn’t find the words and so made weak chopping motions with one hand. Cutting him open, carving him in two, wrecking him beyond repair, all of the above.

This time Aziraphale understood. “Never. I’m afraid you’re quite stuck with me.”

Crowley hadn’t really expected anything else, but it was still nice to hear it.

He nuzzled Aziraphale’s belly, wrapped an arm around him, and sighed happily. He might not know what to do with himself, now that the need for hopeless pining had passed, but he wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.

* * *

“Crowley?”

Crowley grumbled into the pillow and huddled more tightly under the covers. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d gone to bed, but it hadn’t been nearly long enough.

“Crowley. Are you awake? I’m off to the bookshop. Head up for a moment, dear. I want to talk to you before I go.”

Crowley grumbled a little more viciously but lifted his head so that he was barely peering over the pillowcase.

Aziraphale, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, smiled warmly. “Thank you. Now, is ‘garden’ still acceptable?”

Crowley flopped onto his back, frowning. He didn’t have a garden. Neither of them did. “What?”

“As a safe word.”

Only the lingering grogginess kept Crowley from shooting bolt upright. “A _what_?”

“You were the one who taught me about safe words, darling, and we settled on ‘garden.’ Surely you haven’t forgotten already.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing you forgot, but it also wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to be woken up to discuss.

“Right,” Crowley said, “yeah. ‘Garden.’ Fine.”

“Wonderful. Remember that, hm, and so shall I.”

Aziraphale smiled again, wider than before, and—ah, there. Crowley might’ve seen it before if he’d been more alert, that little wrinkle of mischief in his expression. Aziraphale’s harmless version of it, anyway.

“Now,” said Aziraphale, “before I leave you, I’d like you to taste something for me. Can you do that, dear?”

He was laying the endearments on a bit thick too, which was suspicious but intriguing. Crowley nodded.

Aziraphale wasted no time bringing two fingers to Crowley’s lips. Crowley took them immediately into his mouth, and then moaned because he knew that taste. Thick and musky and bitter. He hadn’t seen a hint of anything on Aziraphale’s skin, but both fingers tasted clearly of come.

Crowley swirled his tongue around them, lapping beneath the tips of his nails and in the crevices around them. As he took them deep and sucked, he gazed at Aziraphale, seeing a faint smirk on his lips.

_What were you doing? _Crowley thought. _And without me. Such a dirty angel._

Aziraphale slipped his fingers free and was off the bed before Crowley could protest.

“I’ll be off now. Pip pip!”

“What?” Crowley said to the empty room, sitting upright and breathing heavily. The taste of Aziraphale’s come still hung heavily on his tongue. He threw off the bedsheets, shouting, “Hey, get back here!” but Aziraphale was already gone.

* * *

Crowley could’ve gone after him. (And he nearly did, if he was being honest, but since that would look a bit desperate, he refrained.)

Instead, he waited a respectable few hours, enough time for Aziraphale to get to the bookshop and hopefully suspect that Crowley had simply gone back to sleep to finish his nap.

Then Crowley went to his desk, picked up the phone, and called. Not that he knew what he wanted to say, exactly. Sure, _What the Heaven was that?! _pretty much summed it up, but Aziraphale wasn’t the only one with standards. It was just that Aziraphale’s involved tartan and the same coat for two centuries, and Crowley’s involved not opening his mouth and letting everyone know what he was about.

Aziraphale picked up on the second ring. “Hello, my dear.”

Crowley stared very intently at nothing. Aziraphale didn’t have caller ID, and he had never been skilled at precognition—so he had been expecting Crowley to ring. “Could’ve been a bit awkward, if it hadn’t been me. Calling your customers ‘dear.’”

“Good. Perhaps it would’ve deterred them from visiting. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I think from now on I’ll always answer the phone as if I’m speaking to you.”

Crowley bit back the urge to demand Aziraphale never call anyone else _dearest_, _darling_, or any of the other pet names he’d assigned to Crowley and Crowley alone. Not the time. “Right. Well, about this morning…” He paused, getting his thoughts in order. “What the Heaven was that?!”

“‘That’ was my idea. The beginning of it, anyway. You did want maddeningly intense yearning, didn’t you?”

Crowley’s first reaction was _That’s not what I meant! _His second, immediately on the heels of the first, was _Oh, you clever, devious bastard. _He could only manage a pointless “That was days ago.”

“And I’ve been thinking of it ever since. I got quite eager about it, in fact.”

“So you’re going to…what, tease me? Taunt me?” Just saying the words, not to mention the images that came with them—like Aziraphale’s barely there smirk as Crowley licked his fingers clean, like he wasn’t affected at all beyond amusement—made Crowley’s mouth go dry.

“Mm. And you’ll want so very, very badly, but until I hear a safe word, you’ll not receive.”

Crowley digested that for a moment. This wasn’t the Aziraphale he knew. Aziraphale was…well, all right, he was a bit of a bastard, true enough, but it was more of an incidental bastardness. Just going about his merry way, and then, oh whoops, did that make him a bastard just now?

He wasn’t calculated about it. He didn’t spend days plotting over it.

“Who are you,” Crowley said, grinning, “and what have you done with my angel?”

“Do you know, it turns out that the pleasure of the one I hold most dear is an excellent motivator. Who would have guessed?”

They were smiling stupidly at each other. Crowley didn’t have to see Aziraphale to know it. He could sense the soppiness spilling down the phone line as much as Crowley could feel it bursting from himself.

If Hell could see him now, they’d write him immediately off as a lost cause. Heaven would probably do the same for Aziraphale.

Crowley cleared his throat, gathering all the shattered emotional bits of himself back where they belonged. “Can I take you for lunch later?”

“Oh, that sounds lovely. Where will we go?”

“Your choice.”

“Hmm. Sushi?”

Sushi meant Aziraphale chatting excitedly to the chef, pausing after every bite to sit back in his chair, cover his mouth with his napkin, and let out a little rumble of satisfaction. As if Crowley would ever say no to that. “Sure.”

“Wonderful! I suppose I’ll see you later, then.”

“Hang on,” Crowley said. He had one last question. “While we’re doing this, can I, er…get myself off?”

Aziraphale hummed thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about it. Did you do it often, before?”

“Not…not really, no.” Crowley’d always found that it made him even worse. He’d indulged only when he was very, very desperate—or very, very bored.

Aziraphale said nothing. _Well_, Crowley thought, _suppose that’s my answer._

“So I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours?” Crowley said.

“Looking forward to it!”

* * *

On the drive, Crowley stopped at the little French bakery that Aziraphale liked. He couldn’t even say why he felt compelled, only that it seemed like something that would make Aziraphale smile a touch brighter than usual.

He bought an assortment of croissants and pain au chocolat, and then he made his way to the bookshop.

Aziraphale was waiting for him beside the till, and just as Crowley had hoped, he beamed at the sight of the box in Crowley’s arms.

“Oh, Crowley, you shouldn’t have,” Aziraphale gushed. “You’ll spoil me.”

Crowley suspected it was too late for that, but he was hardly going to complain. Spoiled was a good look on Aziraphale. Crowley handed over the box and watched Aziraphale open it, oohing and ahhing over the selection.

Aziraphale pinched a pain au chocolat between his fingers and picked it up.

“Speaking of spoiled,” Crowley said mildly, “you’ll spoil your appetite if you eat your dessert first.”

“Just one won’t hurt.”

Aziraphale took a bite and squeezed his eyes shut as he swallowed, groaning happily. A tiny bit of chocolate spilled onto his thumb, and after he’d finished the roll, he licked it off.

He wasn’t trying to be seductive about it. Crowley knew that. He’d seen Aziraphale do this very same move hundreds of times before, always cursory, always innocent. But it was as alluring now as the first time he’d done it, when Crowley hadn’t been expecting it and had just stared dumbly at Aziraphale’s pink tongue flicking over the pad of his finger.

“Mm, delicious,” Aziraphale said. “They always overdo it a bit with the chocolate there, but I can’t say I mind.”

Crowley only nodded.

Aziraphale folded the lid back over the box and tucked it beside the till. Crowley stepped to the side, ready to follow him out, but Aziraphale only turned back, a small pout forming.

“Oh dear. I should’ve asked if you’d like a bite. That was very greedy of me. Do you want one?”

“Nah, not—”

“Perhaps a small taste?”

Aziraphale came closer. Crowley’s body understood before his mind did, and it leaned in, lips parting and hands drifting up to rest on Aziraphale’s chest.

At this point Crowley had kissed Aziraphale enough to be able to catalogue his kisses. There was the chaste, sudden-burst-of-affection kiss; the gentle but lingering overcome-with-adoration kiss; and so on. Crowley’s favourite, though, was the harsh and heart-stopping _I’m going to fuck you until you cry _kiss.

That was the kiss that Crowley got just now. It was sloppier, bitier than all of Aziraphale’s other kisses, and it was accompanied by a rough hand on Crowley’s jaw, tipping his head this way and that, moving him however Aziraphale wanted him.

Sometimes Crowley baulked and played hard-to-get, just to mix it up a bit, but today he allowed it. He gave himself to it, melting into Aziraphale like a golden vaguely-man-shaped statue dangled over a fire.

He tasted the chocolate, of course. (It was hard not to. Aziraphale was right; that particular place really went hard on it.) But that was secondary to every other sensation, to the satisfaction of being held in place and snogged until his dick was fully hard without a single fucking touch to it.

When Aziraphale let him go, he almost swayed his way right onto his arse, but he caught himself just in time. He still felt wobbly, though. Wobbly and warm and ready for anything Aziraphale did next.

Aziraphale smiled. “Did you get a taste? Delicious, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The word was barely a croak. Reality was returning, and with it the reminder of Aziraphale’s little plan. Crowley wouldn’t be getting anything else, would he? “Delicious.”

“We can have more later. For now…sushi still all right?”

* * *

They got sushi. It was good, of course. All of Aziraphale’s favourites were. Crowley could fault him for his taste in some things, but never in food.

They sat at a table for two, and although each kept to their own side, not so much as an inadvertent brush of their shoes underneath, somehow the meal was rife with sexual tension.

Or so it seemed to Crowley, anyway. If Aziraphale sensed it too, he gave no indication, aside perhaps from holding Crowley’s gaze just a moment too long whenever he caught it.

Crowley couldn’t sit still. He draped his body one way and then the other. He bounced his knee and drummed his fingers. He adjusted his glasses on his nose even though they were perfectly in place.

He wanted to crawl under the table and suck Aziraphale’s cock. He wanted to rest his bare foot on Aziraphale’s groin and rub him off like that. He wanted to spread his legs wide, scoot his chair back, and gesture to his still-hard dick and say, _See this? You did this. One kiss and now look at me._

But they were in public. And even if they weren’t, that wasn’t part of the game. Crowley was meant to endure desperately but silently. After six thousand years, he should’ve been a master at that.

“So.” Aziraphale dabbed his lips with a napkin. “What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

_Nothing_, Crowley thought. _Not a blessed thing besides sitting around waiting for you to tease me some more. _He said, “Not much. Might pop out for a temptation. Just a small one, to pass the time. Back to the bookshop for you?”

“I think so. I’ve been neglecting it dreadfully since I moved in with you. It’s hardly ever open.”

“Wasn’t ever open much before either.”

Aziraphale shot him a lightly chastising look. “Before you do your tempting, would you like to join me for the scrumptious dessert you brought me?”

Somehow, the fact that he might very well mean it only somewhat as a ruse this time made Crowley burn even hotter.

“Love to.”

* * *

The moment they were in the car, Aziraphale’s hand found its way onto Crowley’s thigh and remained there the entire drive to the bookshop.

It was low enough, almost at the knee, to just sidestep being overtly sexual, but Crowley nevertheless got the feeling that it was a subtle acknowledgement of the state Crowley was in. A _Yes, I know you’re turned on, darling; just a few inches higher and I’d be fondling the evidence, wouldn’t I? _sort of thing.

Crowley gulped a lot but otherwise held very, very still so that Aziraphale wouldn’t feel compelled to stop.

They arrived in record time—which was really saying something, considering Crowley’s usual driving—and Crowley mourned the immediate loss of Aziraphale’s touch, but said nothing as he got out of the car and followed Aziraphale inside the bookshop.

Aziraphale went straight to the till and retrieved the box of croissants.

“You should have one this time,” he said. “Seeing as I was so rude before. Which would you like?”

Crowley, not giving a toss, just pointed to another pain au chocolat. Smiling, Aziraphale picked it up, tore off a bite-sized piece, and held it up. He clearly meant for Crowley to eat it right out of his hand, so that was exactly what Crowley did.

He added more tongue than was strictly necessary and let his lips linger, closed around Aziraphale’s fingertips, as he sucked. He met Aziraphale’s eyes over the rim of his sunglasses and gazed into them the entire time, holding in a wicked grin as Aziraphale nibbled at his own bottom lip, looking torn.

When Crowley let go, Aziraphale tore off another piece and offered it to Crowley, and so it went until the chocolate roll was gone and Crowley stopped pretending to be doing anything other than sucking messily at Aziraphale’s fingers for the Heaven of it.

He was good at sucking. He knew everything that Aziraphale liked, particularly how much he loved Crowley acting like a sloppy whore about it: bobbing his head and drooling down his chin and opening up every so often so Aziraphale could see his flesh slipping up and down Crowley’s tongue.

Eventually Aziraphale yanked his hand away with an exasperated sigh. “You wily serpent, you.”

He drew Crowley in, letting Crowley bracket him against the checkout desk, and their lips met, sharing a moan between them. Crowley leaned into him, trying to blanket every inch of Aziraphale that he could.

This was the tender, soul-shaking kiss, the one that said better than words could how much Aziraphale adored him and needed him and never wanted to be parted from him. It was slow but deep, and Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s back and made low, sweet sounds into Crowley’s mouth for every second of it.

They broke with a whimper on Crowley’s part, a sigh on Aziraphale’s. Crowley was nearly bending him backwards onto the desk, and their legs were intertwined, his thigh against Aziraphale’s erection and Aziraphale’s thigh against his.

That bulge, the obscene outline of it in Aziraphale’s trousers, drove Crowley more wild than even the insistent throb of his own. He ached to undo Aziraphale’s zip and stroke him off. It was practically instinct now: Aziraphale got hard and Crowley took care of him, always.

It hurt, a deep bruising ache in Crowley’s chest, when Aziraphale pointedly nudged Crowley out of reach.

“You have a temptation to do, yes?” Aziraphale said. It was a small consolation that he sounded as shaky as Crowley felt.

Crowley didn’t, of course. He had bugger all that he _had _to do. It wasn’t like anyone was keeping track anymore. But he took a deep breath and said, “Yeah. I, uh, suppose I better get on that.”

Aziraphale straightened his coat and drew it more tightly around him so that it draped in the front and blocked that gorgeous bulge from view.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “could you flip the sign to ‘Open’ when you leave, my dear?”

* * *

The only temptations that presented themselves were lust based. Because Crowley’s luck truly was shit.

A man was contemplating an affair with a colleague. A uni student fantasised idly about seducing one of her profs. Dozens of men, and one woman, contemplated cheating on their spouses.

An older woman on a late lunch break was reading erotica on her phone and counting the hours until she could go home and have a wank.

Then Crowley happened on two young men having coffee in the outdoor seating of a café. One wanted the other with a desperation that was almost too much to bear. His friend wanted him back, but not nearly so badly.

That one gave Crowley pause, but he decided against it in the end. He better than anyone knew the importance of time and pacing, lest you ruin the best thing you’d ever had.

So, at a loss—but not terribly put off by it—he went back to the flat and resigned himself to waiting for Aziraphale.

He didn’t have to wait longer than a few hours. The front door unlocked itself, and Aziraphale came striding in, humming under his breath and bringing an almost tangible warmth and life with him into the usually cold, dead flat.

Crowley, who had been pacing restlessly, threw himself into the regal chair at his desk, propping his feet up and affecting casualness.

“Oh good,” Aziraphale said, practically gliding into the room. “You’re home. I wondered if I might ask your input on something slightly…personal?”

If the hesitation before _personal _hadn’t perked Crowley immediately up, the fact that Aziraphale’s coat was off and draped over his arm, as well as his bowtie being undone and the top two buttons of his shirt lying open, would’ve done it anyway.

_Satan help me_, Crowley thought. _He’s not wasting any time, is he?_

“Sure.” Crowley kicked his feet back down and spun the chair around. “What do you need?”

Aziraphale laid his coat across Crowley’s desk and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

“What do you think of my corporation?” he asked.

Crowley watched his fingers work, deftly opening and removing the article of clothing, which then joined his coat on the desk. “S-sorry?”

Aziraphale untucked his shirt, let it hang a moment, and then ran his hands over his abdomen, smoothing the fabric until it was as good as skintight, showing every ripple that Aziraphale’s movements made in his lush flesh.

“It’s not too…soft, is it? I know it’s not unattractive, and in fact it rather suits me. But I still worry it’s a bit _too _much, you see.”

_Soft _was, actually, the very word that Crowley would use to describe him. Soft in the best possible way, the way that fit Crowley’s lanky form perfectly and held him so securely, so snugly.

“Not a chance,” Crowley said. He knew what Aziraphale was after now, so he didn’t bother to rein in the urge to stare longingly at Aziraphale’s hands still stroking over his belly and then his chest. “Couldn’t ask for a better corporation, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Are you sure?” Aziraphale blinked innocently—far too innocently—before he started to undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt. “You’re not just trying to make me feel better?”

Crowley groaned, letting his knees fall wide open. It was just like the chocolate earlier. Aziraphale wasn’t really _trying_ to be sensual. Crowley had seen him undress himself on a hundred normal days, and it looked exactly like he was doing now. Somehow, that made it even more stupidly, hopelessly irresistible.

“You know you’re gorgeous, angel. I tell you often enough.”

Aziraphale stood close enough to touch, his shirt open, baring inches upon inches of lightly haired skin. Crowley couldn’t help but reach for him, and Aziraphale let himself be tugged forward by his hips.

Crowley nuzzled his stomach, pressed his face into it, and let out a shuddery sigh when Aziraphale laid a hand on his head, encouraging him to linger.

“Am I?” said Aziraphale. “Not as gorgeous as you, though, surely.”

“Psh. More than.”

Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s waist, nuzzling higher. He knew what Aziraphale liked. Something about a nose rub right under his pec, brushing upwards and over his nipple, really got him going. And if that nose touch was followed by a tongue, a wet mouth closing around that swiftly tightening bud…

Aziraphale backed out of reach before Crowley could finish, leaving Crowley moaning unhappily. Aziraphale’s nipple was already harder than before, even though it hadn’t been properly touched. Crowley could see it, peeking out from the part in Aziraphale’s shirt. It hurt him not to taste it and help it along.

“Oh, my darling,” Aziraphale sighed. Blessed prick tease that he was, he began to button up his shirt again. “Look at the state of you.”

Crowley’s legs were already spread as wide as they would go, and he left them there, letting Aziraphale see what he had done. “Your fault.”

Aziraphale smiled, tucking his shirt back into his trousers. “Yes, it is. And it’s…all right, is it, that I’m doing this?” A note of uncertainty cracked in his voice.

Crowley didn’t hesitate. “It’s perfect,” he said, and although it seemed odd to say about something so torturous, he meant it. “Don’t stop.”

* * *

The thing was, pining over Aziraphale was familiar.

Familiar, but also terrible. Some of the worst parts of Crowley’s existence occurred because he couldn’t stop wanting the one thing he was certain he would never fucking have.

The yearning, the rejection, followed him everywhere, haunted him like a ghost in his very bones, spreading its influence so far and so deep it was impossible to exorcise.

And now, when it was finally gone, left to haunt some other poor sod, he missed it. He wanted it back.

He’d got it back. Back and better, because he’d had the one thing he wanted, and he would have it again. The torture would end.

As he lay in bed, watching Aziraphale’s shadow on the wall—sitting up beside him, reading a book by the lamplight—Crowley thought that he’d never felt more like a human. Fetishizing his traumas. If this kept up, he’d be shouting at service workers and complaining about indigestion next.

“Go to sleep, dear,” Aziraphale said. He didn’t look up from his book—Plato’s _Symposium_, if Crowley wasn’t mistaken—but he switched it to only one hand so the other could stroke Crowley’s hair, gravitating effortlessly to the sensitive spot near the nape. “You’re thinking too much.”

Crowley’s whole body went boneless, lulled into bliss as Aziraphale curled his fingers and scratched. “How can you tell?”

A page flipped itself. Aziraphale tucked it under his thumb with the rest of the ones he’d read already. “I know you.”

Crowley suspected that if he thought too hard about how true that was, he’d never get to sleep tonight. Not that he needed it, technically, but it was nice to indulge. Especially with Aziraphale beside him.

“If you sucked my cock,” he said, already quite groggy, “I bet I’d fall right to sleep.”

Aziraphale hummed. “Maybe tomorrow.”

* * *

Aziraphale didn’t suck his cock the next day.

In fact, his side of the bed was empty and cold when Crowley woke. A bit unusual but not unheard of for Aziraphale to refuse to wait around for Crowley to stir in the morning, but that had been most of Aziraphale’s behaviour for the last day, hadn’t it? Odd but not terribly so.

With a great deal of willpower, Crowley dragged himself out of bed and made his way to the en suite, whose sole purpose was to house the largest mirror Crowley could fit into his flat along with the standalone tub that had spawned into being when Aziraphale had moved in.

He stood for a moment in front of the mirror, blinking blearily at his bedraggled reflection. Hell but he looked a wreck, his hair flying every which way and his pyjamas—a black T-shirt and a pair of black briefs—worn in a way that appeared more tattered than comfortable.

He was contemplating what outfit to miracle himself for the day when suddenly Aziraphale popped into place behind him. Fortunately, Crowley had enough control of himself that he didn’t leap in surprise, but it was a near thing.

“Oh good,” Aziraphale said, cheerful as could be. He was fully dressed, looking impeccable. “I worried you wouldn’t be awake by the time I had to leave. I wanted to discuss something.”

_Here we go_, Crowley thought. “Yeah?”

Aziraphale sidled closer until there was scarcely any space between their bodies at all. Crowley could sense his warmth and the softness of his coat, and it took all his self-discipline to not angle himself backwards and feel it for real.

“I was thinking about last night,” Aziraphale said. “When I got home. Do you remember?”

Although Crowley dearly hoped there would come a time when Aziraphale undressing in front of him was such a common occurrence that he began to forget instances of it, that time had not yet arrived. “Course. Do you…have more concerns about your corporation?”

Aziraphale blinked, the very picture of innocence as he met Crowley’s gaze in the mirror. “Oh no, not _me_. No, I couldn’t stop thinking of how sceptical you were when I told you that you were beautiful. Your tone, my dear…as though the very idea was laughable. I realised perhaps I’ve not been open enough in my admiration.”

Aziraphale leaned forward, pressed their upper bodies together, and Crowley’s brain offered up a feeble _You called me ‘gorgeous,’ not ‘beautiful’ _before it spontaneously sputtered and died. It was ridiculous. Aziraphale had touched him so many times now, in states of full undress even.

Aziraphale wound his arms beneath both of Crowley’s, his hands meeting at Crowley’s belly, where they slipped beneath Crowley’s T-shirt and stroked his bare skin. Crowley gripped the marble worktop in front of him, sucking in a sharp breath.

“I haven’t, have I?” Aziraphale said. “Oh, my dear. I’ve been dreadfully remiss. Letting you walk about this world believing you aren’t the most stunning creature in it.”

If the words hadn’t made Crowley woozy enough on their own, Aziraphale waving away Crowley’s shirt certainly would. Aziraphale explored his bare chest almost idly, tracing the dips between his ribs and the strangely sensitive expanse of his breastbone.

Aziraphale’s skin was just slightly darker than Crowley’s. Crowley had never really noticed it until now, but suddenly he couldn’t stop noticing it.

“Do you know,” Aziraphale said, “the moment I first saw you, I would’ve known you were a demon even without the, well, the usual indicators. I thought, ‘No angel would dare choose a corporation so close to Perfection.’”

“Oh, you bastard.” Crowley grinned toothily. “You know what it does to me when you blaspheme.”

“I said ‘close to.’”

Aziraphale tightened his arms, transferring his handsy hold on Crowley to more of a tender cradling of Crowley’s body against his. The chain of his pocket watch dug into Crowley’s back, a line of ice in sharp contrast to Aziraphale’s warmth.

“I also recall,” Aziraphale continued, “oh…fifteen years back or so. You started wearing even tighter trousers than you do now. Do you remember? They had little pockets you could hardly fit your hands in, although you always tried. You would amble about like that, _sauntering_, whilst framing these hips—”

And here he grabbed Crowley’s hands, lifted them from the worktop, and moved them so that Crowley was bracketing his own hip bones between them. Aziraphale rested his hands on top, entwining their fingers.

“—like you were demanding everyone look at you and admire how very fetching you were.”

_Fetching _echoed distantly in Crowley’s mind. It wasn’t quite the word for the impression he’d been going for—then or ever—but he’d take it.

Aziraphale turned his attention to Crowley’s briefs, rolling the waistband down and then giving them the nudge they needed to sling low on Crowley’s hips. They might’ve slipped off entirely if the fabric hadn’t caught on Crowley’s erection, which until that moment Crowley had only been vaguely aware of.

“Mm,” Aziraphale said, nuzzling Crowley’s ear. “You lovely thing. _My _lovely thing.”

He kissed Crowley’s jaw, then right over his snake tattoo. Crowley’s knees went weak, and he wobbled. Aziraphale steadied him without comment and laid another soft kiss on his neck.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said weakly.

“Yes, dear?”

Crowley thought, _I’m going to discorporate before this is through, and the paperwork will be mortifying_, followed shortly by _‘Yes, dear’ should make you should like a bored housewife, but it never does_. He said, “Are you going to touch me?”

“I am touching you.” Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hands, still framing his own hips where Aziraphale had positioned them. “Is this not enough?”

Aziraphale hooked his chin over Crowley’s shoulder and then paused, peering into the mirror. A slow smile spread like butter across his lips.

“Look at us,” he breathed, glowing with quiet but warm affection. “We’re perfect together. Don’t you think?”

Crowley stared at their reflection, but he didn’t see perfection so much as shameful eroticism. Aziraphale held him like Crowley belonged to him, like Crowley’s entire partially nude—and obscenely aroused—form was his for the taking.

“Yes,” Crowley said, sounding as lightheaded as he felt. If Aziraphale touched his cock now, even accidentally—no, _especially _accidentally—Crowley suspected it would start leaking a terrible mess.

So it was probably for the best when Aziraphale stepped away, brushing at his own clothes as though removing nonexistent wrinkles. Crowley sagged, gripping the worktop again for support.

“In any case,” Aziraphale said, so coolly that Crowley’s prick started leaking anyway, touch or no, “I should be off soon. I’m trying to be more consistent about my operating hours.”

“So you said.” Crowley’s voice trembled. He pretended that it didn’t and dared it to try that again. “All right if I pop in later, maybe take you to lunch again?”

Aziraphale beamed. “Of course. You’re always welcome. You know that.”

* * *

Aziraphale wasn’t gone an hour—which Crowley spent sprawled in bed, ignoring his erection in the hopes that it would lose interest and flag—when the phone in the lounge rang.

Grumbling, he took his time getting up and reaching it, and by the time he approached the desk, the answering machine had already picked up.

“I really hate this thing, you know,” Aziraphale’s voice was grousing.

Crowley snatched up the receiver. “Why, because you usually forget it’s a machine and start trying to chat it up?”

Aziraphale sighed noisily, which meant yes.

“Anyway,” said Crowley, “didn’t you just leave? Did you forget something? Need something?”

“Of a sort. I wanted to tell you I haven’t forgotten about sucking your cock.”

It punched the breath out of Crowley. His throat clicked as he tried to work out a response. “Yeah? Good to know.”

“It’s only that…well, you know how very greedy I can be. If I start, I don’t completely trust myself to be able to stop.”

Crowley sank into his chair. It was still twisted to the side from last night and Aziraphale’s little show—which was not what Crowley needed to be thinking about right now. “You do get a bit single-minded when you’ve got your mouth on me.”

“I like fellating you. You make such enchanting sounds. And you taste so good.”

Crowley knew, or at least he knew that Aziraphale thought so. Aziraphale tended to sprinkle in compliments the entire time he was sucking, pulling off every so often to murmur in his husky bedroom voice things like _Oh, you taste divine _and _Mm, you’re dripping_.

“Perhaps I could lick you,” said Aziraphale, sounding casually thoughtful, like he was debating his choice of tea. “What do you call it? ‘Eating you out,’ yes? You like that too, but you’re less likely to get anywhere from it.”

“Not if I’ve got something to rub on.”

They shared a moment of silence. Crowley knew they were both remembering the time he’d lain with a pillow under his hips while Aziraphale had eaten him from behind like a starving man. Crowley had humped himself into a frenzy before eventually coming, and then Aziraphale had fucked him right there in his own mess.

Crowley bit his knuckle, holding in a whimper. G—_Satan_, he almost couldn’t stand the effect Aziraphale had on him.

“What are you doing right now?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley glanced down at himself, his still-hopeful dick tenting his briefs. “Just sitting here. Why? Do you want me to…touch?”

“Not at all. I was making certain that you weren’t, in fact.”

Crowley held in another whimper.

“You haven’t,” Aziraphale said, “have you? Not even a little? Even though I haven’t been there to check up on you?”

“Course not. What do you take me for?” Even if it wouldn’t have ruined this little game for Crowley to toss himself off behind Aziraphale’s back, he didn’t trust that Aziraphale wouldn’t _know _somehow and make him regret it in a very non-sexy way.

“Mm. Good.” Aziraphale practically purred it, not hiding how deeply pleased he was, which was just another in the growing list of things that were doing it for Crowley about this entire situation. “Although, I admit I have been thinking…”

Crowley waited, still biting his knuckle, but of course Aziraphale didn’t continue. Of course he wanted Crowley to _ask_. “Thinking what?”

“Well, I’ve been resisting too, you see. Refusing to allow myself to give in to my urges. But I’ve been thinking there’s no reason for it. Why should I resist just because you are?”

_Oh_, Crowley thought, _yes. _The world spun faster for a moment, and he leaned back in his chair, dizzy and out of breath.

“Angel,” he managed. “If you get yourself off right now, while I can only sit here and listen, I will lose my mind. I swear I will.”

He did not say, _And I will love every blessed minute of it_, but Aziraphale’s chuckle said he’d heard it anyway.

“That’s a check beside the ‘maddening’ bit, then, isn’t it? But no, I didn’t mean now. The shop is open, you know. Imagine if a customer walked in!”

Crowley cleared his throat, more than a little disappointed. “Can’t have that, can we? They might make off with a book while you were distracted.”

“Precisely.” There was a pause. “Ah, speaking of customers. I’d best go now. I don’t like the look of this one. I’ll see you for lunch?”

Crowley wouldn’t miss it for the world, and said so.

* * *

Lunch was lunch.

Aziraphale claimed a hankering for traditional English fare, and so Crowley drove them to a nearby chippy. Aziraphale moaned his way through two pieces of beer-battered cod, and they shared a basket of chips between them.

_Any minute now_, Crowley thought, again and again. _Any minute now, and he’ll start._

But Aziraphale didn’t. Aside from his delighted little noises as he ate, which Crowley had long since established he didn’t realise he was making, Aziraphale did nothing untoward. He frowned and complained about his customers, he smiled and lavished compliments on the meal, and he barely looked at Crowley.

He didn’t even lick the grease from his fingers but instead wiped them neatly on his napkin.

_When I take him back_, Crowley thought, _he’ll invite me in. He’ll tease me, work me up and leave me hanging, just like last time._

But, again, Aziraphale didn’t.

Before Crowley could even miracle himself somewhere to park in front of the bookshop, Aziraphale was saying, “Just drop me off here, if you’d please. Oh, thank you, dearest. Lunch was wonderful. I’ll see you tonight?”

He leaned across the car to kiss Crowley’s cheek—a dry, chaste whisper of lips on skin—and then he was off, without so much as a sultry look thrown over his shoulder or a tantalising wiggle of his arse.

“Bastard,” Crowley muttered when he was out of sight. “You brilliant bastard.”

How did Aziraphale know exactly where to hit him, every single time? His cunning was almost devilish.

Crowley loved him so bloody much.

* * *

Crowley went to bed early. In part because he was unusually exhausted, having spent most of the day and night wound up; his cock in a permanent state of at least partial interest, veering often and without provocation into _so interested you could hang a coat on it if you wanted_.

But also because the waiting, and the pretending that that wasn’t what he was doing, was driving him spare. Better to simply will himself into unconsciousness until Aziraphale decided to move on to the next part of his plan.

He’d been asleep for who knew how long when suddenly he was jolted awake. The bedroom was dark, and he was curled on his side, scowling groggily at nothing, uncertain what had woken him.

He rolled over, seeking out Aziraphale, and then he realised.

Aziraphale was lying on his back, wearing only his white button-down shirt, which was unbuttoned. His knees were bent and fallen to either side, creating a natural frame for the hard prick he was stroking between them.

“Oh,” Crowley groaned, “fucking _Hell_.”

Aziraphale’s reading lamp was off for once, leaving the room nearly pitch black, but Crowley’s eyes had never needed light to see. He saw everything: Aziraphale’s own eyes squeezed shut, his mouth wide around his deep and shuddery breaths, his trembling thigh muscles, and the thick bead of precome clinging to his cock head.

It was the last that threatened to short-circuit Crowley’s brain. Crowley’s own dick was a leaky tap at the best of times, and a veritable fountain at the worst, but Aziraphale’s almost never was. No, Aziraphale only started to drip like that when his prostate had got a good, long seeing to.

“Angel,” Crowley said faintly.

Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered open. “Oh, good, you’re awake.” With his free hand, which had been clenched around the duvet beside him, he grabbed Crowley’s wrist and brought it between his thighs. “I had to stop. I couldn’t get a good angle. Could you…?”

“Yes.” Crowley would’ve said yes to anything, really, but what Aziraphale was clearly asking for? _Yes _barely scraped the surface of how eagerly Crowley would oblige him.

Aziraphale was slick and loose inside, and he took two of Crowley’s fingers without resistance. Crowley bit his lip, thinking about how long Aziraphale must’ve been doing this, just waiting with dwindling patience for Crowley to wake up and help.

“There,” Crowley said, finding Aziraphale’s prostate and giving it a rub. “That better?”

“Oh, yes. Softer, please.”

_Sensitive tonight_, Crowley thought, adjusting accordingly. _He must’ve needed this for a while. _How long had it been since Aziraphale had had anything inside him? Too long, clearly. Crowley had a lot to make up for.

“Good?” Crowley asked. “Soft enough?”

Aziraphale nodded and moaned, his eyes slipping shut again. He tugged hard and fast on his cock, and soon enough he was arching into his grip, his whole body going tight as he yearned towards orgasm.

“That’s it,” Crowley said. His arm was shaking, fighting the instinctive urge to ram his fingers as deep as they would go, the way he’d want if their positions were switched. But Aziraphale didn’t want that; he wanted _this_. “Come on, sweetheart. Make yourself come.”

A few more strokes, and Aziraphale did just that, clenching around Crowley’s fingers just seconds before come began to spill out of his prick. Crowley rubbed him through it, even more softly, drawing out the pleasure until Aziraphale’s cries began to quiet.

“Stay,” Aziraphale said before Crowley could withdraw his hand. “Just…for a bit.”

Crowley’s own neglected cock gave a throb—of sympathy or protest, he didn’t know which—and he would’ve whined pathetically if he’d had less self-control. His sudden awareness of his own arousal reminded him of what they were doing, what Aziraphale’s little show here had probably been about.

There would be no reciprocation, no consolation. Crowley had helped Aziraphale get off, and Crowley would get nothing in return.

The knowledge burned in a way that shouldn’t have felt good, but it did.

“Yeah,” Crowley croaked. “Just tell me when.”

Aziraphale was mopping up the mess he’d made with his fingers, although at a certain point he was just smearing come around his pelvis instead of cleaning it up. Crowley’s mouth watered at the sight, and as if he knew what Crowley was thinking, Aziraphale lifted his filthy hand and offered it to Crowley without a word.

Crowley licked up every drop and sucked gently on the webbing between Aziraphale’s thumb and forefinger when there was nothing left. He moaned and tried to follow when Aziraphale’s hand moved away, but Aziraphale was only scooping up more streaks of come for Crowley to swallow.

It went on a bit longer, until Aziraphale was about as clean as he would get, and then he removed his hand for good and sighed, “All right. Out, please.”

Crowley felt like he was the one going empty when he slipped his fingers out. Empty and bereft, and shaking because of it. He wanted to suck Aziraphale hard again and sit on his cock. He wanted to put his prick up Aziraphale’s arse and fuck him to another, even better orgasm.

He wanted Aziraphale to curl around him and stroke him off, whispering dirty nothings and promises of love into his ear.

“So sorry to wake you,” Aziraphale said. He yanked the bottom of his shirt down, a poor attempt to cover himself. “That was dreadfully selfish of me, wasn’t it? Go back to sleep, my dear. It’s not even morning yet.”

“No complaints here,” said Crowley. He shouldn’t have, perhaps, but he meant it. Heaven did he mean it. “It suits you, selfishness.”

Smiling, Aziraphale rolled towards him and kissed his forehead. He said nothing else, just held Crowley close as Crowley breathed deep and tried—in vain—to calm down enough for sleep.

* * *

“Give you a lift?” Crowley said in the morning. There was an urgency to his tone that even he didn’t understand.

The worst of his blue balls had burned itself off in the course of the night, but it had left behind a manic energy that was somehow both foreign and utterly familiar.

The idea of being alone the entire day, left to his own infernal devices, seemed unthinkable. He didn’t want to be away from Aziraphale. He didn’t want Aziraphale to forget him, not even for a minute.

Aziraphale, straightening his bowtie with the help of the en suite mirror, looked pleasantly surprised by the suggestion. “That’s very kind of you. I’d love one.”

“We could get breakfast on the way, if you like. Maybe…” Crowley thought quickly. “Pancakes! It’s been a while since we’ve had pancakes, hasn’t it? Thick, American-style, just _dripping_ with blueberries…”

Aziraphale gave a dreamy sigh. “I do like pancakes. And you’re right; it’s been far too long. Do you think they’re still open, that charming little place we used to—”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t they be?” The restaurant would be open, Crowley didn’t say, if he had to miracle it from the ashes on the drive over.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The place was not only open but bustling when he and Aziraphale arrived. Crowley might’ve had a hand in the cosy two-person table that awaited them with a cup of tea made exactly the way that Aziraphale preferred, though.

Aziraphale lit up at the sight of it and breathed in the steam with an expression of such contentment that Crowley had to stop himself from clutching his chest and groaning.

“Someone is in a mood this morning,” Aziraphale said before he took a sip.

“People usually say that when they mean a _bad _mood.”

“Do they? I don’t. Although, we probably shouldn’t talk about what sort of mood I did mean. There are children here.”

The children were across the room, banging on the window and leaving sticky handprints on the glass. Nowhere within hearing range.

Crowley leaned across the table and lowered his voice anyway. “Angel. Were you going to talk dirty to me over breakfast?”

Aziraphale gave him a look that Crowley thought at first was meant to be chastising. Then he said, “Perhaps I was hoping you would be the one talking dirty. You’re so much better at it than me, after all.”

Crowley made himself keep breathing and smiling like they were teasing each other perfectly platonically. “I’m really not. Did you hear yourself yesterday morning?”

“Yes. I also heard you last night, telling me to make myself come.”

A waitress approached their table, frowning in confusion at the tea that Aziraphale was still happily sipping. Crowley wanted to tell her to piss off, but he gave her a smile and ordered for them both instead.

When they were alone again, he asked Aziraphale, “Liked me telling you that, did you?”

“Oh yes. I always like the way you talk to me when you fuck me.”

Crowley had to sit back in his chair for a moment and rub a hand down his face. His cock had just finally started to go completely soft again, after the torture of the night before. So much for that.

He leaned back in. “Say the word, darling, and I’ll see to it the loo is empty. Then I’ll talk to you all you want.”

Aziraphale wriggled in his seat, sending Crowley’s pulse momentarily through the roof, but then said, “I’m a bit sore, actually. I might’ve been a bit too…hasty, before you got involved.”

It had always amazed Crowley how adept the human body was at experiencing two conflicting emotions at once. Like, for example, blinding lust at the thought of Aziraphale needing it up the arse so bad that he’d got “hasty” about it—and, tart that he was, appreciating the soreness afterwards so much that he would rather leave it than heal it—and anger at himself for not realising before now and not being awake in the first place to get “involved” when Aziraphale had wanted it.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Aziraphale said. “There’ll be other times.” He glanced beyond Crowley’s shoulder and broke into a grin. “Oh, I say, that was quick!”

The waitress approached with their food, and Aziraphale wasted no time tucking into his pancakes, giving them all his attention. Crowley might as well have not even been there. Aziraphale certainly didn’t seem to recall that not two minutes before they’d been discussing anal sex in the loo.

“Mm!” said Aziraphale, as though he’d just remembered something. He swiped at his mouth with a napkin. “I wasn’t going to ask this morning, but since you’re here, would you pop into the shop with me? I need your help with something. Won’t take but a moment!”

_There it is_, Crowley thought. Or…maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Aziraphale really did need Crowley to help unload new inventory or something. Honestly, who knew, anymore, what Aziraphale was capable of?

“Sure,” Crowley said, and then dug into his own food.

* * *

There was a piece of tri-folded paper taped to the door of the bookshop, with _Fell _written on it in black ink. Aziraphale clucked his tongue and rolled his eyes when he saw it, then ripped it off and gestured for Crowley to enter first.

“Who’s that from?” Crowley demanded as he held the door for Aziraphale to follow.

“The son of a man who was once quite keen to turn my shop into some…oh, something or other, I don’t recall. Anyway, his son has decided to take up the mantle, as it were. It seems I’ll have to get a bit more…stern.”

“Really? Does he have a name, this son?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about.” Aziraphale stepped around Crowley, heading deeper into the shop. “This way. It’s in the back room.”

_What is? _Crowley thought but didn’t ask. He was trying not to consider it too hard, but the vagueness seemed a large check under the ‘Ruse’ column rather than the ‘Needs Genuine Help’ one.

As soon as they were there, Aziraphale pointed to one of the sofas. “Sit there, if you please.”

It wasn’t exactly the _I’m going to fuck you until you cry _kiss that Crowley had been hoping for, but he obeyed anyway. He took off his sunglasses while he was at it, folded them, and set them aside. “Here?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Aziraphale fell to his knees so suddenly, and with such a floor-shaking _thud_, that Crowley jerked with a startled noise. He pitched forward, reaching like there was anything for him to do. “Whoa, hey! Angel—”

Aziraphale gripped him by the shoulders and shoved him back into the sofa. “Don’t.” He crawled closer, and Crowley’s knees parted themselves, giving Aziraphale room to settle between them. “I want you to sit there, stay exactly as I move you, and do nothing else unless I tell you to. Do you understand?”

Crowley stared, wide-eyed and as stunned as he was turned on. Aziraphale’s tone was as flat and rough as a brick, and twice as harsh. Crowley hadn’t heard it like that in…a very, very long time. And never directed at him. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

Aziraphale’s expression softened, just a little. “Good.”

Then he went to work on Crowley’s zip. By the time he got it undone, and Crowley’s trousers down around his ankles, Crowley’s prick was already standing proud and long and devastatingly erect.

Not that Aziraphale paid it a whit of attention. His hands under Crowley’s thighs, he hiked Crowley’s legs up until he was practically bent in two, his shoes and bunched-up trousers hovering above his head.

“Oh, fuck me,” Crowley gasped, just before Aziraphale bent to lick at Crowley’s arsehole.

It felt filthy. It always did. That was why Crowley liked it. It felt like something he shouldn’t be allowing, but this was Aziraphale—Crowley would deny him nothing—and something about granting Aziraphale, and Aziraphale only, access made it all the hotter.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley moaned softly.

His trousers were starting to creep up his calves again, blocking his view, so he snapped his fingers and did away with them. His shoes too. Nothing to distract him from how intently Aziraphale was lapping away at him, like the world would end if he couldn’t coax Crowley’s muscles into relaxing enough for a proper tongue-fuck.

But no sooner had Crowley done that than Aziraphale was pulling away with narrowed eyes. “What did I say?”

Crowley whimpered. “Angel. Don’t stop.”

“Do _nothing else _unless I tell you. And I didn’t tell you, did I?” Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and Crowley’s trousers and shoes were back.

There was no reason that should make Crowley’s hips thrust and his prick give up its first dribble of precome, yet that was exactly what happened.

“Didn’t tell you to do that either. Or to speak, or to make any sound at all for that matter.”

Crowley sank his teeth so deep into his bottom lip to shut himself up that he almost let out a noise of pain. But he held it in, thankfully, and sat there, silent and folded like a pretzel, as Aziraphale went back to licking him.

He was wet and messy about it—Crowley could hear it as well as he could feel it, Aziraphale’s warm saliva gathering at the rim and dripping down to the sofa, no doubt making a damp spot. Just the thought of leaving a stain on Aziraphale’s furniture nearly rattled another moan loose.

_Please_, he thought, _fuck me. I’ll lie here and let you. I’ll take it without a word. I’ll do anything. Just please let me have it._

Finally, Aziraphale drew back, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. Crowley held in another cry, and braced himself. For a finger, a cock, anything.

Aziraphale gripped Crowley’s calves and, gingerly, lowered them to the floor. He waited a moment there, massaging the muscles like he thought they would stiffen up or cramp—as if Crowley would allow such a thing—and then he started to roll Crowley’s trousers back up his legs.

Forgetting all about keeping quiet, Crowley said, “What are you doing?”

“Helping you dress. Can you stand?”

_Why the Heaven would I want to? _he wanted to snap, but before he could, his body was already moving, falling into line like it had been created to do whatever Aziraphale asked.

“Good.” Aziraphale stood too, smiling. “Thank you. That’s much easier.”

Easier for him, maybe, but worse for Crowley. He could _see _the outline of Aziraphale’s erection in his trousers, and he could _feel _his own throbbing, angrily, as Aziraphale tucked it away again. With the aid of a miracle, probably, since it fit back into Crowley’s tight jeans with a suspicious lack of discomfort.

“I’m terribly sorry to cut this short,” Aziraphale said, “but I do need to get to work. I have a bit of sorting to finish before I open. Can you see yourself out?”

He spoke calmly, not even a hint of tension in his tone. Like it didn’t matter that he was leaving them both unsatisfied. Like he hadn’t even wanted to be satisfied in the first place.

Crowley’s legs wobbled, but he managed to keep them beneath him where they belonged.

“Yeah,” he said. Satan, even his voice was wobbly. “Course. I’ll, uh…see you.”

With Aziraphale pretending to be busy and distracted, it was easy enough for Crowley to nick the letter from whoever’s son on the way out. Something to keep him occupied while he waited a semi-respectable amount of time before he crawled back to the bookshop for lunch.

* * *

If this kept up, Crowley thought, he was going to get a complex about Aziraphale and food.

More than the one he already had, anyway. Which until now he hadn’t believed could get any more massive and glaringly obvious.

He managed to hold off until late afternoon, at least, before he caved and phoned the bookshop with an offer to treat Aziraphale to lunch. (Of course, he owed part of his impressive display of patience to Mr. William Richards, Jr., who took up rather a lot of time. Because if you were going to do something, Crowley figured, you might as well do it thoroughly and with a Hell of a lot of style—quite literally on the Hell bit.)

“Sandwiches,” Aziraphale decided after a length of thoughtful humming. “I’m still quite full from breakfast, but I wouldn’t say no if you brought sandwiches. Mmm, a simple ham and cheese, I think.”

“Ham and cheese. Got it.”

Crowley got him a slice of lemon drizzle cake as well, just because he thought Aziraphale might want something sweet afterwards.

He was back in the Bentley, racing towards the bookshop, when he realised he’d forgotten to get himself something as well. Not that he cared about food the way that Aziraphale did, or ate as much of it and with such loving and sensual consideration, but he usually at least pretended.

Ah well. Crowley wasn’t much for sandwiches anyway.

The sign had already been flipped to ‘Closed’ when he arrived, but the door opened for him as it always did. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he got hard. From associations, maybe, or anticipation about whatever else Aziraphale had up his sleeve.

Whatever the reason, it made the act of finding Aziraphale (sitting at his desk, poring over ledgers) and handing over the food Crowley had got for him even more erotically charged.

Aziraphale beamed at him, his smile as bright as a sunrise. “Thank you, my dear. You really are so very good to me.”

Aziraphale dug into the bag. He passed Crowley the lemon drizzle cake before unwrapping his sandwich. Crowley waited a moment, staring down at the treat in his hand, before he understood.

“No,” he said, “this is yours too. For, er, after. If you want it.”

“For me?” Despite the question, Aziraphale didn’t seem all that startled. Crowley wondered if he’d known all along and just wanted to make Crowley admit it, the bastard. “What about you?”

Crowley shrugged, as though he’d got himself nothing intentionally and not because he’d been solely concerned with Aziraphale. “Not really hungry.”

“So you…brought me lunch with the expectation that you would simply sit and watch me eat it?”

It wasn’t that different from their usual meals, really, but when it was put like that, Crowley had an urge to slither into a hole and stay there for the rest of the day. He shrugged again and swore vengeance on his complexion if it took on even the slightest tinge of pink.

“Hmm.” Aziraphale took the cake back and set it at the corner of his desk. “Well, in that case, perhaps I could persuade you to assist me in something.”

Crowley would’ve said yes regardless, but his agreement came all the more quickly when Aziraphale began to unbutton his trousers.

“I have some work to do while I eat,” Aziraphale said, “but if you wanted to help make that work a bit more pleasurable, I would appreciate it.”

“Yes.” Crowley went to his knees, already licking his lips, his mouth watering. “Yep. Happy to help.”

Aziraphale’s dick wasn’t fully erect, not like Crowley’s, but that was simple enough to fix. Crowley grasped the base and smeared a messy kiss over the tip before he started to suck, and it stiffened up nicely, stretching his jaw a fair bit as he took it into his throat.

“Slow, darling,” said Aziraphale, stroking Crowley’s hair. His knuckle knocked the earpiece of Crowley’s sunglasses, which Crowley had forgotten all about. “You know how I like it, yes?”

Crowley did. Gentle, drawn-out bobs of his head, his lips slipping so languidly along Aziraphale’s length that it felt like worship, the sort that people devoted their whole lives to. Aziraphale liked a lot of tongue and spit, and he liked when Crowley paused occasionally and opened his mouth wide, giving Aziraphale a filthy little show.

Except when he tried to make a show of it now, he found that Aziraphale wasn’t looking at him any longer. Aziraphale had his sandwich in one hand and a pen in the other, and was marking up his ledger with a frown wrinkling the space between his eyebrows.

Like he didn’t care that Crowley was sat here on the floor, sucking his cock. Like he didn’t even notice how perfectly Crowley was doing it.

Crowley moaned, a soft and shivery sound. He couldn’t help it. His own cock, trapped and ignored in his jeans, had pulsed and dribbled a load of precome so thick he knew it would leave a wet spot.

“Shh,” Aziraphale said, still not looking at him.

No noises. He didn’t give a toss whether Crowley was enjoying himself. It didn’t matter—Crowley didn’t matter.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut, trying to pretend that he couldn’t feel his prick throbbing and leaking again, fighting the need to suck like he was ravenous and moan like a shameless whore while he was at it.

Entirely too soon, Aziraphale’s sandwich was gone and his hands were back in Crowley’s hair, not to stroke encouragingly but to pull Crowley off his cock. A line of saliva stretched between Crowley’s still-wide mouth and the flushed-red tip of Aziraphale’s prick, but it broke when Aziraphale replaced Crowley’s lips with his hand.

He finished himself off that way while Crowley could only watch, helpless and hungry. When Aziraphale came, the mess vanished almost as soon as it formed. Crowley could have cried. Nothing for him to lick clean. Nothing of Aziraphale’s for him to swallow and keep.

Crowley moaned as Aziraphale tucked himself away and did up his trousers. This time Aziraphale didn’t shush him, although he did—finally—glance at him. Crowley didn’t know what he looked like, but whatever it was, it was enough to make Aziraphale blink in owlish surprise.

“All right, my dear?”

Crowley nodded, so turned on he felt hazy with it. His thoughts oozed. Now that he’d started moaning again, he couldn’t seem to stop, each one weaker and more broken than the last.

Aziraphale cupped his cheek, and Crowley turned to nuzzle his palm and then take Aziraphale’s thumb into his mouth. He sucked it like he’d sucked Aziraphale’s cock, slow and wet. The skin tasted like butter. It took Crowley an embarrassingly long time to realise it must’ve been from the sandwich.

When Aziraphale tried to draw his hand back, Crowley followed with a whimper, and so Aziraphale relented and let Crowley carry on fellating his thumb until—torturously, like slogging against the tide—Crowley’s mind rebooted and reality returned.

He rested back on his haunches, fixing his glasses which sat crooked on his nose, and then hauled himself to his feet.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” said Aziraphale.

Crowley nodded, more readily this time. “Yeah, sorry. Just got a bit…” He gestured vaguely, not sure what he even wanted to communicate.

Aziraphale seemed to understand. “Good. Well, you don’t have to be off immediately, do you? I’d like it if you could stay, keep me company. Just for a bit.”

_For Hell’s sake, I’m fine_, Crowley thought, fighting an eye roll. _I’m not going to _drop _if you leave me alone. _But…it did sound nice. Being with Aziraphale, basking in his glow, while Crowley got himself fully back under control.

“If you like,” he said, and went to sprawl on the sofa.

* * *

Crowley stayed for the rest of the day—entirely accidentally, as he drifted off to sleep there on the sofa—and they went home together in the evening.

Aziraphale wanted only “nibbles” for dinner (which meant a charcuterie board), and after he’d eaten his fill he decided he was in the mood for a bath.

Crowley was out of his seat almost before the words had left Aziraphale’s mouth. “Just sit there, angel. I’ll run you one.”

He got a bit carried away—adding chamomile, rose, and a touch of sandalwood to the water, then floating a few dozen rose petals on top—but in his defence Aziraphale would’ve done the same if he’d run his own bath. In fact, Aziraphale probably would’ve lit candles too, but Crowley wasn’t ready yet to forgive all of candle-kind for what had happened to the bookshop.

The wealth of fondness in Aziraphale’s expression when he saw Crowley’s work made Crowley feel a little like a candle anyway, on fire and melting into a puddle of wax at Aziraphale’s feet.

“Goodness, my dear. You really are in quite a mood today, aren’t you? Will you join me?”

Crowley was all too happy to oblige.

The water was blissfully warm, and as soon as he had lowered himself into it, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him and eased him backwards until he was lying against Aziraphale’s chest, cradled between Aziraphale’s legs.

Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s temple, his ear, his tattoo. “So good to me,” he murmured into Crowley’s skin. “You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you, if I wanted.”

“Not _anything_.” Crowley might’ve been a sorry sod, but he was far from spineless.

“No, quite right. Anything within reason, I should say.” Aziraphale’s fingers, making patterns below Crowley’s rib cage, skimmed upwards and circled one of Crowley’s nipples. “Like letting me taste you and use your mouth to satisfy myself, and never once asking to be satisfied in return.”

Crowley arched his back with a guttural sound that grew stronger as Aziraphale thumbed at his nipple. Crowley should’ve known. The two of them nude in a bath together—of course Aziraphale wouldn’t let this opportunity pass by without exploiting it.

“I confess I’m not quite done for the day,” Aziraphale said, pinching now, hard enough that Crowley tipped his head back and shouted. “I trust you don’t mind.”

Crowley didn’t, but let his body say what his mouth couldn’t seem to manage. By the time that both nipples were stiff and sore, he was gasping and moving his hips in little useless thrusts beneath the water.

“I want you,” Aziraphale said, barely a whisper against Crowley’s ear. “I always do, but especially today. As soon as I licked you this morning, I knew I had to have you before the day was done.”

He abandoned Crowley’s chest in favour of Crowley’s inner thigh, then the sensitive crease between leg and groin. Crowley grabbed the tub rim on either side of him, trying to keep from writhing out of his skin before this got to the good part.

“You’ll do that for me, won’t you?” said Aziraphale. “When we go to bed, I’ll lie back and you’ll sit astride me and make me come.”

He touched Crowley’s cock, a brief brush of fingertips before he closed the shaft in a tight grip and squeezed. The water sloshed with the force of Crowley’s full-body jerk.

“Angel,” Crowley panted.

“I’m here, darling. Tell me when you get close.”

That first stroke was electric, the pressure perfect, and on the second Crowley was already moaning, “Close, close!”

Aziraphale stroked him a third and fourth time, and Crowley thought, _Oh, _Hell_, he’s going to end it like this. _Then Aziraphale let go and held Crowley while he thrashed, his prick practically screaming despite what the rest of him wanted.

“There we go,” Aziraphale murmured. “Just in time. That’s it. I have you.”

He did it four more times, touching Crowley’s prick even beyond Crowley’s warning and stopping just barely before Crowley started to come. Crowley’s reasoning cracked and frayed, and he forgot what they were doing and what the rest of him wanted. Every time Aziraphale let go, Crowley twisted in Aziraphale’s arms and bared his fangs and howled to the ceiling.

Then the worst passed and he slumped, begging, “Please, please,” again and again, not entirely certain what he was asking for.

“You have your garden if you need it,” Aziraphale told him, not an ounce of sympathy in his tone. “But if you don’t…”

He bent Crowley’s legs for him, angled Crowley’s hips up—making his cock bob in the water and Crowley burble another mindless “Please”—and found Crowley’s arsehole with his fingers.

“Is this all right?” Aziraphale said, circling, circling, not pushing in.

Crowley only moaned softly and nodded. It was good. If nothing else, maybe it would take his focus off his throbbing, aching dick.

Aziraphale pressed gingerly in and, with the aid of the water, fingered him until the sharp edge of desperation had dulled, leaving room in Crowley’s awareness for the filthy, exhilarating sensation of taking something up the arse.

“Fair warning,” he said, and grunted when Aziraphale added another finger. “This’ll get me close too, if you keep it up.”

Aziraphale hummed in acknowledgement. “It won’t get to that point. I’m simply stretching you a bit before we relocate.”

True to his word, he slipped out a few moments later and kissed Crowley’s shoulder.

“I’m going to clean up in here,” he said, “and you’re going to go to bed and get ready for me. Do you understand?”

Crowley licked his lips and shifted his hips from side to side. He could still feel Aziraphale in there, almost. “How tight do you want me?”

Aziraphale’s next inhale was shuddery. “Very.”

In that case, there wasn’t much for Crowley to do to get ready, but he got out of the bath anyway and made it to the bedroom, even if his legs kept wobbling and nearly sending him into walls on the way there.

He threw himself onto the duvet, which was always miraculously wrinkle-free and tidy by night no matter what state Crowley had left it in that morning. He switched on the lamp with a snap, found the lube in the bedside table, and got to work slicking himself up, taking care not to stretch himself too much in the process.

_He’ll lie back, and I’ll sit astride him and make him come_, Crowley thought, recalling the nonchalance in Aziraphale’s tone as he’d said it. _Fuck._

His erection hadn’t flagged in the slightest, but for a while at least it had stopped leaking quite so much. Not any longer. It dribbled continuously, leaving thick rivulets along the length of his prick and a growing puddle on his stomach. He didn’t dare touch it.

“You’re a vision,” Aziraphale said from the open doorway. His skin was fully dry, clean, and bare, and it glowed golden in the lamplight.

“And you’re hard.” Crowley beckoned him, spreading his legs wide, letting him see everything Crowley had for him. “Come on, angel. Let me take care of that for you.”

He waited until Aziraphale had got comfortable, on his back with his head nestled on his favourite overstuffed pillow, before he climbed on top. Then he didn’t bother faffing about. He slid his lube-coated hand along Aziraphale’s cock to get it slick, held it in place, and lowered himself onto it.

The thickness was always shocking, always stole the air from his lungs, no matter how many times Crowley had had it in him. It wasn’t enough to hurt—or perhaps Crowley was just unconsciously miracling the discomfort away—but it was enough for him to feel, just for a moment, that he couldn’t take all of it and that he would skewer himself if he tried.

Then Aziraphale let out a barely audible “Oh, Crowley,” his lovely eyes gone glazed with lust and his bottom lip bitten red, and Crowley remembered he would do anything—within reason—for this stunning creature who loved him.

It got easier after that.

“Tight enough for you?” Crowley said.

“Tight and hot and possibly the best thing I have ever felt.” Aziraphale gripped Crowley’s hips, although he didn’t do anything once he had them, just held on as Crowley began to move. “Slow. Slow.”

Right. Crowley grit his teeth but obeyed, lifting himself inch by sluggish inch off Aziraphale’s prick before sinking leisurely down again. _Bloody tease_, he thought. _Why are you like this?_

But he knew, of course. Because Aziraphale liked to savour things, because he didn’t see the point of rushing when he could linger and indulge to his full gluttonous content instead. No matter how detrimental the torturous drag of his cock inside Crowley’s arse, over Crowley’s already-oversensitive prostate, was to Crowley’s mental state.

Crowley lasted a minute, maybe two, before he was pleading, “Let me go faster. Harder. I’ll fuck you so good, angel, please.”

“Not yet.”

Aziraphale dug his nails into Crowley’s hips, which only resulted in a throb of Crowley’s dick and a drip of precome falling onto Aziraphale’s abdomen.

Crowley swallowed the rest of his protests and his pleas and kept fucking himself at the same slow, gentle pace. He stared into Aziraphale’s face, focusing on the way it had started to pinch with pleasure and the way his eyes were not only glazed now but half-lidded, his cheeks a light pink. This was what mattered—Aziraphale wanting and Crowley giving without question.

“You tempter, you,” Aziraphale said. “Looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Mm. Like you adore me.” He jerked Crowley’s hips, sitting Crowley roughly on the full length of his dick, making Crowley clench and cry out. “Make me come.”

Crowley didn’t hesitate. He pitched forward, hands anchored on either side of Aziraphale’s neck, and then he rode Aziraphale with a ferocity that surprised even himself. His lungs burned, his balls ached, and he never wanted it to stop. Give him this from now until eternity, and he’d happily fade into oblivion, fucking Aziraphale’s cock so hard and deep it was practically hammering all the way to his throat.

He was so lost that he didn’t realise at first what was happening when Aziraphale arched beneath him and started spilling something wet and warm inside him, but when he did, he looped his arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders and clung, moaning into Aziraphale’s neck, so pleased and proud of himself for making Aziraphale come.

Aziraphale held him close, still pumping steadily into Crowley’s arse, filling him up, and saying, “Oh, Crowley, so good,” again and again.

* * *

Crowley slept pretty much not at all that night, too busy rolling this way and that and wiggling his arse against the sheets, luxuriating in how loose and wet he still was.

He felt Aziraphale’s gaze on him a few times, watching him like you might watch a dog about to piss on the furniture, and that calmed him down for a bit. But never for long.

The impulse to touch himself—to shove his fingers into his hole at the very least if not to jerk his poor, still-throbbing cock—was a constant niggle, like the buzz of an insect in your flat that you couldn’t find or an itch you couldn’t reach. It was bearable, sure, but so blessed _uncomfortable _and annoying, impossible to ignore.

“Restless?” Aziraphale said, speaking into the open book in his lap. Plato again, by the looks of it.

Crowley made a face into his pillow. “That’s one word for it. ‘Randy’ might be a better one.”

“How about ‘maddeningly intense yearning’?”

“That’s three words, angel.” But, recognising what Aziraphale was after, he gave it a moment of careful consideration. “‘Maddening’ and ‘intense’ are fairly spot-on, yeah. ‘Yearning’…seems a bit too strong a word.”

There was a pause. “Oh?”

Crowley lifted his head. He knew that tone. Knew that look too: Aziraphale’s lips gone thin and tight, his eyes a bit squinty. “That’s not a complaint!”

“Mm.”

“I mean it,” Crowley insisted.

Aziraphale said nothing, only turned a page in his book. Gradually his expression relaxed until he appeared almost serene. Which meant he was getting engrossed in his reading again, Crowley knew.

Crowley settled back down and tried (and failed), again, to stay still long enough to sleep.

* * *

The morning was rough. It shouldn’t have been—because it wasn’t like he _needed _sleep, for Satan’s sake—but it was.

Maybe, he reflected as he clutched his cup of coffee like a snivelling coward might clutch a sword, he needed to dial it back a bit. Let his corporation remember good and well that it wasn’t mortal and didn’t require things like regular rest and meals and caffeine to function.

“You really should let it cool, my dear,” Aziraphale told him as Crowley took his first sip. “You’ll burn your tongue.”

Crowley promptly turned his careful sip into a massive gulp. And, yeah, all right, it burned a bit, or a lot, but he blamed Aziraphale for putting the idea into his head.

“Well, seems you’re ‘in a mood’ with all the appropriate connotations this time.”

“Shut up,” Crowley said, but it was good-natured.

He liked sitting in the kitchen with Aziraphale in the morning. It was a domestic and human thing to do, which was likely why they didn’t do it more often, but it was nice. And although the lust from last night had largely abated, it had left stirrings of something similar in its wake. A need to be around Aziraphale, a craving to be touching him always.

Crowley shifted his foot, rubbing it against Aziraphale’s where they were slotted together as tightly as books on a shelf. Aziraphale gazed at him fondly and rubbed back.

“When are you leaving?” Crowley asked.

“Whenever I get around to it, I expect. I thought today I might keep the shop closed to customers and use the opportunity to do a little reorganising. It’s good to change things up now and again.”

Crowley let his raised eyebrows say what he thought about Aziraphale changing anything up, especially his bookshop.

Not taking the bait, Aziraphale continued airily, “I wanted to see if you would join me. I enjoyed your company very much yesterday. I understand, of course, if you’ve something more important to do, but…”

Crowley didn’t need Aziraphale’s little hopeful glance through his lowered lashes—of course Crowley would say yes—but it was a nice touch. “Yeah, I’ll come. Help out, anything I can do.”

“Oh. Oh, good.” Aziraphale smiled like he’d honestly believed Crowley might refuse, with a shoulder slump of relief and everything. “Thank you.”

Crowley’s heart gave a patter. _Maybe ‘yearning’ isn’t _too _off the mark_, he thought.

“I’ll get dressed,” he said, beginning to stand.

Aziraphale waved for him to sit back down. “Finish your coffee at least. There’s no hurry.”

* * *

Crowley finished his burning coffee and then went to miracle himself an outfit. (It was, if he was being honest, not much different from the one he’d miracled yesterday or the day before, but at least it _felt _different. Not like Aziraphale who picked up and put on the same physical clothes day after day.)

When he left the en suite, satisfied with how he looked, he found Aziraphale seated at Crowley’s desk in the lounge. He’d scooted the chair backwards and removed everything except his button-down shirt, and he had one leg slung over the chair arm and one hand dipped below his hard cock, fingering himself.

“Nng,” Crowley said, coming to a dead stop.

Aziraphale lolled his head to the side and gave Crowley a small, barely there smirk. “I thought this chair would be terribly uncomfortable, you know. It looks it. But it isn’t so bad.” He removed his fingers—two of them, and as they slipped out they made a wet noise that seemed to echo in Crowley’s ears—and stood. “Before we leave, would you do me a favour? Yes? Wonderful. Sit.”

Crowley walked forward on rubbery legs and sat. The chair was warm where Aziraphale had been. He swallowed thickly.

“Should’ve done this before you dressed, I suppose,” said Aziraphale. He made quick work of Crowley’s zip and soon had Crowley’s prick stiffening in his slippery grip. “Foresight isn’t my strong suit, I’m afraid.”

He turned, and Crowley got a tantalising glimpse of his arse cheeks peeking from the bottom of his shirt before Aziraphale sat, guiding Crowley’s cock inside him.

The position was a bit awkward. Crowley would’ve liked to be able to hook his chin over Aziraphale’s shoulder, look down and watch Aziraphale start to ride him, but he couldn’t, not unless he utterly ruined the angle. He wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s chest anyway and encouraged him to lean back, steadying him, even though it meant Crowley was as good as smothered against the rigid chair back.

Aziraphale’s tight, slick hole taking him deep more than made up for any discomfort. Not to mention Aziraphale’s soft, not-quite-whining “Uhh,” the sound he only ever made when his sweet spot was being hit right where he needed it.

“Angel,” Crowley bit out. “Oh, angel, what are you doing to me?”

“What I want,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley buried his face in Aziraphale’s upper back and whimpered. “Am I hurting you?”

Crowley shook his head.

“Good.” Aziraphale bent forward slightly, planting his feet on the floor. Crowley unwrapped his arms and grabbed Aziraphale’s hips instead, holding on passively as they started to rock, testing out different motions. “Mmm. Oh, that’s nice.”

“Yeah?” Crowley said. Aziraphale leaned a little more, reaching for the desk to brace himself, and when Crowley glanced down, he had the perfect view of his cock slipping, shining and pink, out of Aziraphale’s arse. “Ah, _Hell_. Or—Heaven, or—_fuck_.”

Aziraphale seemed to find what he’d been looking for, a small but fast scooping sort of movement with his hips that brought an “Uhh” from his lips every single time.

“I thought of this,” Aziraphale managed between near-whines. “All the time.”

“‘This’?”

“The chair. You were royalty, and I was—I was—someone, I don’t know, and you let me have you. Oh, Crowley, there.”

Gripping Aziraphale’s hips tightly, Crowley took over, trying to keep that same angle and motion as he fucked Aziraphale on his cock while Aziraphale clung to the desk and wailed.

He was always loud like this. Any other act, it seemed, and Aziraphale could contain his sounds of pleasure to a normal-ish, even a restrained, volume. Not when he was getting buggered. Then he could practically shout the rooftop down.

It drove Crowley wild, made him feral with greed. It made him think—hope—that it meant he fucked Aziraphale so good that Aziraphale couldn’t contain his bliss, just had to let it out the only way he knew how.

Aziraphale stood suddenly, ripping out of Crowley’s grasp and leaving Crowley’s prick exposed and twitching furiously as though to say _Why’d it stop?!_

“What—” Crowley clasped the chair arms, wrestling for control. “Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

Aziraphale giggled—_giggled_—although at least he did it shakily, as though control wasn’t coming so easily for him either. “No, no, of course not. I just…well, the urge to touch myself was becoming impossible to deny. I’m not ready for that yet.”

“You…”

Crowley stared, turning the words around and around in his mind until they made sense. And then—the epitome of a _Let there be light _moment if he’d ever had one—he realised what he had to look forward to today.

“Angel,” he said, sounding as awed and perversely delighted as he felt. “When did you get so cruel?”

Aziraphale laughed again, breathily. “I have it on good authority that I’m just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.” He smoothed his shirttail down, as though it did anything to hide his erection. If anything, it emphasised it. The gorgeous, tempting bastard. “So, the bookshop?”

* * *

All the windows were already blacked out when they arrived, a new sign on the door reading ‘Closed for training.’ Crowley gave the word choice a heavy side-eye but ultimately didn’t comment.

As soon as they were inside, Aziraphale did away with his coat, waistcoat, bowtie, trousers, and socks and shoes, leaving only the white button-down, the top two buttons of which he undid. Crowley watched the whole undressing—which was straightforward, perfunctory, and all the more erotic for it—with wide eyes, and then decided to take off his own coat and his sunglasses.

“There a reason you keep leaving the shirt on?” he asked.

“Feels more comfortable this way,” Aziraphale said. “I think I’d get cold without it. Besides—” He shot Crowley a smile. “—I like the way you look at me when I’m like this.”

Crowley could’ve asked, but he suspected he knew how he looked at Aziraphale. Like Crowley simultaneously wanted to rip it off him and worship him in it—or at least that was what it felt like from Crowley’s side. So he only said, “You said you liked the way I looked at you last night too.”

“Did I?” Aziraphale’s smile turned playful. “Goodness, I wonder what that could mean.”

_That I need to look at you more_, Crowley thought. _Or, rather, that I need to let you see how I look at you._

“Can’t imagine,” he said lightly. He gestured at himself. “Should I take these off, then, or…?”

Aziraphale tipped his head thoughtfully. “Only if you want to. I think I’ve proven by now that I’m capable of getting to you when I want.”

The memory flashed of Aziraphale’s weight in his lap, Aziraphale’s tight arse sinking down on his cock. The room swayed in Crowley’s vision for a moment.

He wasn’t going to survive this, he thought. He’d burn right out of his corporation and love every second of it.

“Fair enough,” he said roughly. “Where do you want me?”

“Hmm. I think we should get all the books in one spot before we start rearranging them. It’ll give me a chance to examine them too. You’d be surprised how grimy they can get with all the humans—”

“Hang on. You’re actually _rearranging_?”

Aziraphale smiled, perfectly guileless. “You didn’t think I was simply going to fuck myself on you all day, did you?”

Crowley was goggling a bit. He tried to stop. “Not… No, obviously not _all _day, but—”

“Books,” Aziraphale said. “Stack them neatly, please. And no miracles. It ruins the binding.”

“We both know you made that up just so you’d have an excuse to fondle them.”

“_No miracles_. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to go back to the flat.”

It was probably an empty threat, but Crowley shut up and got to work.

He’d rather cut off his tongue than admit it out loud, but he’d never been a fan of handling Aziraphale’s books. They were too precious, some of them fragile, and Crowley courted disaster on even a good day. He felt like every touch risked sullying them.

And today was worse. Aziraphale had knocked him off balance—in the best way possible, but still. It was difficult to pay attention. To keep his mind off his own prick and his eyes off Aziraphale, who was bustling around on the opposite side of the shop in his shirt, which rode up a little with each step, revealing more of those creamy thighs, that thick (and still hard, albeit only partially) cock, and that glorious bottom.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, startling Crowley out of a momentary haze. “Can you come here?”

Crowley went. Aziraphale had a massive brown tome in one hand, and he squeezed it back into its place on the shelf when Crowley approached. Then he gripped the bottom edge of that same shelf, which required him to half bend over, stuck out his arse, and looked over his shoulder at Crowley.

“Would you mind?” He said it like he was asking Crowley to pass him a pen.

“Really?”

“Just for a bit.” Aziraphale flipped the tail of his shirt up, exposing himself completely, before he returned his hand to the shelf. “Please? I confess I’ve always wanted to be ravished against these shelves.”

Of course he did. And of course Crowley wanted nothing more than to oblige.

Crowley undid his jeans as quickly as possible.

“Just move me as you need to,” Aziraphale said. “I can bend.”

Crowley was moaning from the thought even before the sensation hit him. Aziraphale was as tight, slick, and warm as he’d been at the flat, and as soon as he was full, he was shoving back into Crowley’s pelvis like he wanted more, like he needed every millimetre Crowley had to give.

“Oh, oh, that’s good.”

Aziraphale said it softly enough he might’ve been talking to himself, or no one at all, but Crowley answered, “Yeah? It is?” like it had been meant for him.

“Mm-hm.” Aziraphale swivelled his hips, slowly and then gradually faster, harder, until their bodies were slapping together. “Uhh. That’s it. Crowley—”

Crowley knew his cue. “Got it.” One hand around Aziraphale’s waist and the other on his hip, holding him in place, Crowley started to fuck him. “Like that?”

Aziraphale only whined, which was good enough for Crowley. He kept going, memorising the angle and the rhythm and the pace, everything about this, so he could keep ticking all the right boxes.

It was difficult, increasingly impossible actually, not to lose himself in how good it was. Aziraphale’s tight little hole clutched his prick so well, fit him like damp silk that clung to all his sweet spots. And those spots were so sweet—Crowley’s cock was so sensitive, almost too much.

Add in Aziraphale’s loud, enraptured sounds, and Crowley felt a fucking wreck in no time.

Really, he should’ve been relieved when Aziraphale cut off one of his own cries to gasp, “All right, no more.”

But Crowley wasn’t. Interrupting his thrusting and pulling out felt like carving out a piece of himself and leaving it to hang outside his body, still connected enough to hurt but not to function.

When Aziraphale stood up straight, fixing his shirttail, Crowley couldn’t help but plaster himself to his back, scattering frenzied kisses and nips everywhere he could reach.

“Oh,” Aziraphale sighed, reaching behind and cupping the crown of Crowley’s scalp. “Dearest.”

“It was good? You liked it?”

“You know I did. You’re an expert at fucking me. Positively masterful.”

_I try_, Crowley thought, thankfully regaining control of his mouth before any more of his insecure needling slopped out. _I really do. Just let me keep trying and I’ll—_

He forced himself to step backwards and let go of Aziraphale, forcibly gathering up the reins of self-discipline and holding them taut.

And if his voice wobbled when he said, “Back to work, then?” well, neither of them mentioned it.

* * *

It happened three more times.

Aziraphale wanted it against the checkout desk, bent over one of his uncomfortably stiff armchairs, and finally against another bookshelf but in a slightly different position—shoved face-first, fully standing, into it, with Crowley lifting one of Aziraphale’s thighs for easier access.

It got a bit frenetic, that last one. When Crowley realised one of Aziraphale’s cheeks was being mashed against the hard edge of a bookshelf, he gripped Aziraphale by the throat to tip his head back—which drove Aziraphale wild.

“Lord,” he cried, his muscles clamping down on Crowley’s cock so tight that Crowley shouted and his whole body seized up in ecstasy. “Oh, Lord. Crowley, please!”

“I’ve got you.” Crowley panted wetly against his ear. “That’s it, let it out.”

His prick had long since stopped being shy (assuming it ever had been shy to begin with) about its constant seepage and was drooling a torrent—or at least that was how it felt to Crowley—into Aziraphale’s arse with every thrust.

So when Aziraphale declared, “That’s enough,” and Crowley agonisingly but dutifully withdrew, Crowley’s dick slipping free was followed by a thin stream of precome dripping down Aziraphale’s thigh.

Crowley didn’t have the strength to deny the impulse to capture a handful each of Aziraphale’s arse cheeks and spread them, giving himself a picture-perfect shot of Aziraphale’s loose, puffy hole spilling another thicker glob of the stuff.

Even better than that, though, was that Aziraphale didn’t push him away or tell him to stop. Aziraphale stuck out his arse even further, as though he were inviting Crowley to do more than watch.

Crowley’s self-discipline did a spinning swan dive into nonexistence.

He threw himself against Aziraphale’s back, kissing his hair, his shoulders, his neck.

“Please,” he hissed. “Please, let me finish it.”

Aziraphale’s shirt felt silky under his hands, but not enough so that Crowley didn’t want skin instead. He slipped under Aziraphale’s hem and dragged his palms along Aziraphale’s sides, cupped his pecs.

Aziraphale stretched, simultaneously pushing his chest into Crowley’s touch and his bum into Crowley’s groin, as good as begging for it, which made his answer—“No”—all the more incomprehensible.

“Please,” Crowley insisted. He kissed Aziraphale’s ear, the cartilage, then the lobe. “I’ll make it good. I’ll make you come.”

“I don’t want to come, dear. I want to get back to work.”

“You do.” Crowley could _feel _it. Aziraphale’s wants—the big ones, the ones that gnawed at him like a sickness or a pain—had always screamed at him. “You wouldn’t still be here moving like this if you didn’t.”

No more penetration, but Aziraphale was still rocking his body like he was taking it, swaying into the bookshelf and then back against Crowley.

“You feel good,” Aziraphale said. “You always do.”

He turned with his head before the rest of him, seeking Crowley’s lips with his own. Crowley kissed him, fucked his mouth like he ached to fuck his arse. Aziraphale moaned around his tongue and grabbed at his shirt, nearly tearing it as he made fists in the fabric and pulled Crowley closer.

Crowley broke away to kiss his throat, the side of his neck, to open his teeth wide and _suck_.

“A little more,” said Aziraphale. His leg lifted and slipped clumsily in its quest to hook around Crowley’s hip. “Just…just a little.”

Crowley hiked him up, silently daring the bookshelf to topple as he pinned Aziraphale against it. By sheer force of will he bullied them both into a position where he could ram his cock into Aziraphale.

“Hard,” Aziraphale gasped, impaled again on Crowley’s prick and looking, sounding, feeling so magnificent that Crowley could cry. “Do it hard.”

It wasn’t quite brutal, but it was as close as Crowley ever let himself get. He had Aziraphale shouting, clawing at the back of Crowley’s shirt, and still Crowley pounded into him faster, deeper.

The shelf behind Aziraphale groaned and quaked, the books jostled and fell onto their sides, but with Aziraphale wailing “Yes, yes,” Crowley found it difficult to give a damn. He’d fuck Aziraphale right through another Apocalypse if Aziraphale asked him to. If Aziraphale kept making those noises, kept clutching Crowley like he _needed _him, kept feeling as hot and perfect around Crowley’s dick as he did.

The urge to come arrived suddenly, bearing down on Crowley like a sin. _Hold on_, he told himself. _Make him come first. Get your hands on his cock and make him scream._

Which was precisely when Aziraphale said, “Stop.”

It felt like the worst thing Crowley had ever done, but he threw himself backwards, yanking his prick painfully free and leaving Aziraphale to flounder to get his feet back under him again.

“Sorry,” Crowley said, returning to make sure Aziraphale didn’t fall. “Sorry, sorry. Wasn’t thinking. Are you all right?”

“Wonderful, darling. Absolutely wonderful.”

With trembling arms Aziraphale drew Crowley into a loose embrace. Crowley sagged, first with a surprisingly strong wave of relief and then with the full realisation of what had happened.

“No,” he said. “No, no, no. Don’t leave us like this. Don’t—”

“Just a little longer. You’re doing so well.”

“No. No, let me. Please, I’ll…”

Crowley looked down. His black jeans were stained with smeared whitish dots. As he watched, his hips swayed involuntarily forward, and a little more precome dribbled out of his prick and smeared onto the front of Aziraphale’s shirt, just beside where the fabric was tented deliciously.

“Oh God,” Crowley said. His throat was dry. Then he caught himself. “Satan. Someone. Fuck.”

“More or less, yes.”

Crowley groaned. “Don’t make jokes when you look like that.”

He plucked at Aziraphale’s buttons, trying to undo the full column of them. When Aziraphale grabbed his wrists to stop him, Crowley looked into his eyes, so lovely and blue, and saw that Aziraphale had got himself under control again. Crowley saw it, although he didn’t understand it. He felt like he was about to crumble to dust if they didn’t carry on.

“The books,” Aziraphale said.

“_You_.”

Aziraphale smiled, as sunny and warm as a campfire. “Do you want me, my dear?”

An inane question, but Crowley answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“Very badly?”

“Yes!”

“Do you yearn for me?”

Crowley bared his teeth, hating himself with a fiery passion but loving Aziraphale more. Living in utter dazzlement and adoration at Aziraphale’s divinely devious mind.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Good.” Aziraphale kissed his mouth and ducked away before Crowley could reciprocate. “Stay that way.”

* * *

Crowley stopped giving a shit about the books. He yanked them off the shelves, dropped them in their piles, and rinsed and repeat.

Aziraphale had disappeared among the stacks, but Crowley could hear him humming like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Crowley couldn’t have said with any degree of certainty what had changed, why being denied had been maddening but ultimately bearable before but was now enough to make him shake and totter and have to pause every once in a while to just lean against a piece of furniture and breathe.

He hadn’t fixed his trousers. They were still undone and shoved low on his hips, almost to his thighs, which definitely wasn’t improving his already-impeded walking ability. But his prick was too fucking hard and sensitive to go cramming it into clothing, and anyway he wanted it out, accessible, for whenever Aziraphale wanted him again.

He rested his forehead against the bookshelf, holding in a moan. _Should just take everything off_, he thought. _No obstructions_.

That sounded good, so he did it. Then he had to lean against the bookshelf some more because he felt absolutely shameless, which had always been a feeling he’d enjoyed in the carnal sense.

The humming ceased suddenly, and Crowley’s entire body went on alert. What had happened? What was Aziraphale doing? Was he looking for Crowley?

A grunt came next, sounding a little closer than the humming had been. A good kind or a bad kind? Crowley couldn’t tell.

It was ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop paying attention. He felt like a vine growing towards the sun, wholly dependent on it and attuned to every single change. _The pining_, he recalled. _The anticipation. _How every second without Aziraphale had been terrible, but nowhere near the torture of being with him.

Oh, Heaven, Aziraphale was brilliant.

“You know,” Aziraphale called, “I think I might’ve underestimated the scope of this project.”

Even his voice, cheerful and melodic, was doing it for Crowley right now. He bit his knuckle for a moment before he called back, “You, underestimate? I’m shocked.”

“Oh, pish.” That was definitely nearer than before. “I’ll have you know—”

Aziraphale wandered into view and froze, eyes going wide. Crowley didn’t want to think too hard about the state he must’ve been in to justify that sort of look.

“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale said it so kindly, indulgently even, that Crowley couldn’t hold in a whimper. Aziraphale bit his bottom lip, that plush pink thing, and then muttered, “Oh, bugger it.”

He lowered his gaze to the space between them and snapped his fingers. A massive pillow about the size and fullness of a mattress, with the same pattern as the rug it now covered, popped into existence.

Aziraphale gave it a scowl as though he wasn’t quite satisfied, but then said only, “It’ll do,” and started unbuttoning his shirt. “As long as my knees aren’t raw by the end of it, it hardly matters.”

“Oh no.” Crowley didn’t exactly intend to say it, nor did he really mean it. “Angel, you’re killing me.”

“You don’t want to fuck me while I’m on my knees?” Aziraphale tugged off his shirt and tossed it onto a chair. “Pity. I suppose I’ll have to do it myself.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Aziraphale stepped onto the pillow, the surface of which rose and fell like waves as he moved, and got onto his hands and knees in the centre, his arse facing Crowley. He shuffled his legs wide, spreading himself, showing off that pink little hole.

“Well,” he said over his shoulder. “Get on with it, then.”

Aziraphale might as well have yanked on a string, or a lead, to bring Crowley closer. Crowley had little control aside from choosing not to fight the pull.

He fell to the floor just before he reached the pillow and crawled the last few feet so that the first part of him to reach Aziraphale was his mouth.

Aziraphale tasted marvellous, in no small part because Crowley knew at least some of what he was tasting was himself on Aziraphale’s skin.

“Not what I meant,” Aziraphale said with a gentle but pointed nudge of his heel against Crowley’s leg, pushing Crowley away. “Lovely as your tongue is—”

“I know.” Crowley rose to his knees, gripping Aziraphale’s arse first for stability and then for guidance. “It’s this you want.”

Crowley’s cock went in as easy as anything, leaving no doubt that Aziraphale was looser now than he’d been earlier—and looser because Crowley had _made _him that way.

“Oh, angel,” Crowley said, sounding as shattered as he felt. “You feel perfect.”

He had barely bottomed out before Aziraphale was rolling his hips, getting them started, and Aziraphale barely had to fuss with the angle before his arms gave out, putting him facedown in the pillow. His sweet, almost-whine told Crowley all he needed to know.

“Ahh, that’s the spot, is it?”

His hands on Aziraphale’s thighs, he swung Aziraphale back and forth, making him fuck himself on Crowley’s cock. Aziraphale’s shudder and muffled cry said he liked that, so Crowley did it again and again.

In an embarrassingly short time, Crowley was leaking profusely into him, his balls drawing up. But he remembered himself. No coming. Not a chance. And even if he could, he wouldn’t. Not when Aziraphale was still wailing into the pillow, still needing it just like this.

“Sweetheart,” Crowley said. He wanted to bend over and kiss Aziraphale’s shoulders, bite at his nape, but that could ruin whatever place he’d fucked his angel into. “That’s it. Tell me how good it is.”

Aziraphale reached blindly behind him and dug his fingers into Crowley’s waist. “Harder.”

Crowley gripped the top of Aziraphale’s shoulder, using it to thrust him back onto Crowley’s prick at the same time that Crowley pounded into him.

Aziraphale keened like he was in ecstasy, but still he said, “Harder. Harder!”

Crowley felt like he was ascending to some higher plane as he complied. If his body was stretched to the limits of its restraint, then his mind wasn’t far behind. He was fraying at the seams. He was going to unravel to nothing but tatters.

“Mm!” Aziraphale cried. His hips jerked, a frantic back-and-forth jabbing motion that Crowley knew well.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Yesss. That’s the stuff. Come for me, sweetheart.”

He realised only after Aziraphale had been reduced to whimpers and sluggish rolling hip movements that Aziraphale’s arms were folded under his head and had been the whole time.

“Oh God,” Crowley moaned, and thought for a rapturous but awful moment that he was going to cream himself. “Tell me you didn’t just come from nothing but my cock fucking you. Lie if you have to. Because if you did—”

Aziraphale crawled forward, and Crowley’s dick popped out not a second too soon. Crowley fell back onto his arse and just…didn’t touch. Didn’t touch no matter how he wanted to, how much every part of him was howling at him to.

“That,” Aziraphale said, and rolled onto his back, displaying the mess he’d made all the way up to his chest and his pink, gasping face, “was _sublime_.”

* * *

“I might need a cigarette,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale had practically carried him to the back room so he could sit on the sofa while Aziraphale got him a glass of water. Part of Crowley wanted to protest the obvious cossetting—and point out that neither of them technically needed water—but the cold felt nice as it trickled down his throat. It felt a bit like he’d screamed himself hoarse, except he knew, and he could hear, that he hadn’t.

“That’s unfortunate,” Aziraphale said. “Because you aren’t getting one.”

Crowley snorted and swallowed another mouthful of water. He was shivery and fuzzyheaded, and his limbs didn’t entirely feel like his own. Neither did his prick. Which was fitting since it was a deep reddish colour he’d never seen it reach before.

_Maybe that’s what happens when you get someone off without a reach-around_, he thought. _Your cock changes forms. Like a Pokémon. _He laughed at the idea.

“Something funny?” Aziraphale asked.

He’d sat next to Crowley, still nude but clean and less flushed, and was raking Crowley’s fringe from his forehead. Every time he stopped, the hair flopped back, and he had to rake it again.

“Crowley?”

Crowley let himself blink. He’d earned it, he thought. “Feel a bit…high,” he managed to say.

Aziraphale hummed. “Something to do with the endorphins, I expect. How do you feel aside from that?”

“Good. Bit chuffed.” Crowley smirked over the rim of his glass. “My cock made you come.”

Aziraphale smiled. “It did. I enjoyed it very much.”

It wasn’t the profound gratitude or adulation Crowley might’ve preferred, but he decided not to dwell. Maybe Aziraphale was still processing it too.

“You can refuse,” Aziraphale began, then hastily added, “Well, of course you can. You can always tell me no.”

“Probably won’t. Within reason and all.”

Crowley waited for Aziraphale to say what Crowley could refuse, but Aziraphale only nodded towards the water, which Crowley had lowered between his knees.

“Finished?”

He took it from Crowley, set it on the floor, and then swung himself around to straddle Crowley’s thighs. Crowley coiled his arms around Aziraphale’s waist, eager to pull him into the cuddle he thought Aziraphale was angling for.

Then Aziraphale caught Crowley’s bobbing dick in his hand, and Crowley had a split second of confusion before he understood.

“You—” He looked down. “You’re not even hard.”

“Who says I have to be?”

Aziraphale bore down, and they both moaned—Crowley considerably more loudly—as Crowley slid inside him.

“It’s nice this way too,” Aziraphale said. “My muscles are relaxed. Mmm. Nothing to distract me from how…mm, how open and full I feel.”

“Oh, God. Someone.”

Crowley dropped his head back, and was promptly caged between Aziraphale’s hands, which clutched the sofa for balance. Crowley couldn’t look away from Aziraphale’s face, his deepening wrinkles of concentration.

“Do you feel that?” Aziraphale asked.

He was barely moving, swivelling his hips in the tiniest circles Crowley could imagine.

“I feel a lot,” said Crowley, sounding strangled. “You’ll—nng, you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Your head.” Aziraphale huffed a small laugh and added, “The head of your penis, that is. It flares a lot, you know, and the—the top ridge of it—” His eyelashes fluttered. “—rubs right…”

His voice trailed off into a moan, a fragile thing that Crowley wanted to gather up and keep safe for all of eternity.

“Angel,” he said around a moan of his own. “My angel.”

Aziraphale said nothing to that, only circled his hips faster.

The silence stung. It shouldn’t have; Crowley knew that. Aziraphale knew that he was Crowley’s, and more than that, Aziraphale _wanted _to be. This whole thing—the wanting and not getting—was a game, a sham.

_It is, isn’t it?_

Terror, sudden and sharp, rose like a blade in Crowley’s throat. The words spilled out: “Do you still—”

He couldn’t finish. The words, and one in particular, might’ve sounded divine on Aziraphale’s tongue, but Crowley was still working on getting comfortable hearing and feeling them on his own.

Aziraphale met his eyes. “Do I what? Want you? Love you?”

Crowley nodded.

“Hopelessly,” Aziraphale said. “Irrevocably. There is never a day when I don’t thank the Almighty for bringing me to you and letting us have this. In fact, shall I tell you a secret?”

He leaned in and rested his forehead against Crowley’s.

“I believe, I truly do, that that’s the only reason—my gratitude, that is; my unending devotion to Her because of Her part in this—that I haven’t Fallen.”

Aziraphale had gone still. Crowley didn’t know when and was torn on the issue of whether he’d wanted Aziraphale to stop or not.

He hurt. Everything hurt. And it was the most terrible, beautiful hurt he’d ever felt.

“Don’t forget that you have a garden,” Aziraphale said quietly. “Do you need it?”

Crowley shook his head so violently his brain seemed to slosh from one side to the other. “No. Not yet.”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, looking suspicious.

_Don’t you dare_, Crowley thought at him, panic surging. He wasn’t ready for the wanting to end. Not yet.

But then Aziraphale kissed his mouth once, sat back, and started to ride him in earnest. Crowley convulsed and clutched at him, scraping his nails along Aziraphale’s spine.

He pressed his face to Aziraphale’s chest and clung, saying “Angel, angel,” the word getting more and more garbled until it was little more than a half-sobbed, broken sound in his throat.

His heartbeat pounded in his cock, and Aziraphale’s hole, hot and loose and wet with Crowley’s precome, clenched around it like Aziraphale was trying to milk him. And Crowley wanted it—wanted it like he’d wanted almost nothing in his life, except for the angel fucking himself now in Crowley’s lap—but he wouldn’t have it. No matter how much it hurt.

_I’m going to cry_, he thought. His eyes burned. His throat went tight. _God and hellfire, I’m going to break down right now._

Aziraphale stopped just before Crowley could, and the disappointment was shockingly fierce. But then it passed almost as soon as it had struck. He clung a few minutes longer before he let go and slumped into the sofa, whimpering. His prick twitched and leaked as Aziraphale climbed off.

Aziraphale gave him back his glass of water and kissed his forehead.

“I want to tidy up,” he said, “and then sit with you. We can leave when you’re ready. Get an early dinner. How does that sound? Are you all right?”

Crowley nodded. His breathing was as shaky as his limbs, and his voice was low and wobbly when he answered, “Course. Go. Just don’t get dressed yet, yeah?”

When Aziraphale was gone, the panic bubbled again. _It’s not a sham. He doesn’t want me_, Crowley thought.

But then he remembered. No. No, that was the best part of all of this: _He does_.

* * *

By the time they went to dinner, Crowley felt a bit like a boat on a calm lake, bobbing gently with the waves and drifting wherever the wind took him.

Aziraphale seemed loath to stop touching him, which added to the feeling. He held Crowley’s hand in the car and took Crowley’s arm on the short walk to the restaurant, a charming Italian place that was as cheap as it was delicious. Inside, they sat next to each other, their chairs dragged as close as possible.

Aziraphale fondled him under the tablecloth. First only on the thigh, his fingers mapping a meandering path up and down, but then he cupped Crowley’s cock in his jeans and rubbed it, excruciatingly tenderly, until their food arrived.

He started up again while he ate, one-handed, and Crowley simply stared down at his own plate in a daze.

“You,” Crowley said, trying to hide a gasp, “are a bastard.”

“Thank you.”

But after another rub and a squeeze, the touch retreated. Crowley missed it immediately and tried to tug Aziraphale’s wrist back, but Aziraphale managed to finagle it until they were holding hands instead.

“Eat,” Aziraphale said. “It’s too good to waste.” Then, in an undertone: “Eat, and I’ll suck you when we get home.”

Crowley ate every blessed bite and didn’t let go of Aziraphale once.

* * *

Crowley’s calm waters lasted until they were back at the flat and he finally felt Aziraphale’s tongue on his dick, licking in a lazy slide from the tip to the base and then back up. He lingered near the head where it flared, and Crowley remembered: _the top ridge of it—rubs right…_

Suddenly Crowley couldn’t stop trembling or arching helplessly off the bed and moaning, his legs wide, his toes curled.

“Mmm,” Aziraphale said. “You’ve made such a mess, dearest. Look how wet you are. And how far it’s spread.”

He sucked on Crowley’s testicles, one and then the other and then back again, and he bathed Crowley’s inner thighs with his tongue and traced the crease up to his groin and back to his cock.

“What am I?” he said before he swallowed Crowley down to the root.

Crowley kicked uselessly, overwhelmed, and wrenched the duvet in his fists.

Aziraphale pulled off and looked up at him. “Darling? What am I?”

Crowley groaned, trying to twist onto his side and curl up. His prick hurt. It ached and throbbed like a wound, and all he wanted was for Aziraphale to keep touching him.

Aziraphale grabbed his hips and forced him flat again. “Crowley. What did you call me earlier? Do you remember?”

Crowley’s muzzy brain spat out a kernel of information. “Angel.”

“Mm-hm.” Aziraphale laid a sloppy kiss to the tip of Crowley’s cock, lapped up a fresh dribble, and pulled back. “But whose angel?”

“Mine,” Crowley said.

“Yes. Exactly. So tell me. What am I?”

Aziraphale took Crowley into his throat and swallowed. Crowley shouted and would have tried to twist and curl again if Aziraphale weren’t still holding him, unyieldingly, in place.

“Angel,” Crowley choked out. “My angel. Mine. Mi—”

Aziraphale pulled off just as Crowley began to writhe, his balls drawing up tight. His cock dribbled some more, almost a full spurt. Aziraphale cleaned it up eagerly with a not-quite-whine.

And just like that, Crowley’s resolve fragmented.

“Garden,” he said. “Garden!”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Aziraphale took Crowley’s dick deep. He bobbed his head, his throat working, and Crowley came in seconds. Almost immediately he regretted it and was furious with himself for giving in, but since by that point it was too late, he resigned himself to simply lying back and allowing the pleasure to take him.

It went on and on, and then Aziraphale pressed a knuckle to the skin under Crowley’s testicles, and it went on some more, even sharper than before, so good he found himself letting out a sob with every pulse.

Even after the orgasm ebbed, it felt good: a warm, tingly sensation that travelled his whole body and wrapped him up like an embrace.

Aziraphale followed it up with a literal embrace, and Crowley rolled into his arms and dragged him into a kiss that didn’t feel like any of the others Crowley had catalogued.

He decided to call it the deep, soulful _I am yours and you are mine and don’t you fucking forget it_ kiss.

* * *

“How did I do?” Aziraphale said.

He’d insisted on washing Crowley’s hair in the bath, followed by producing a batch of chocolate-covered pretzels out of the aether. (Crowley was a fan of those, although he rarely indulged, preferring to save them for special occasions.)

They were in the bed now, nude, Aziraphale sitting with his back against the headboard and Crowley curled up with his head on Aziraphale’s thighs.

All in all, Crowley couldn’t imagine ever being happier.

“Full marks,” he said. “Two gold stars. Stunning display of proficiency.”

“Really? No feedback or complaints?”

“Not a one.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Aziraphale plucked a pretzel from the plate beside him and offered it silently. Crowley turned his head, let Aziraphale drop it into his mouth, and considered while he chewed.

“Well,” he said, “not complaints, per se, but…”

“Things to keep in mind for next time?”

They shared a smile, Crowley’s considerably more toothy. There would be a next time. He was already looking forward to it.

“Yeah, for next time. More of a…a marked progression, yeah? Start out really cold, like you don’t…” Crowley swallowed, feeling like he had a piece of pretzel still stuck in his throat. It was never easy, this talking bit, even if he knew it had to be done. “Like you don’t care. At all. And then get…er.”

“Warmer?” Aziraphale suggested. “Softer? More affectionate and loving?”

“Yeah. Yeah, all of that.”

“Hm. I was a bit all over the place in that regard, wasn’t I?”

“Not that bad,” Crowley said. “You did get softer at the end, but…”

“Yes.” Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s cheek with the back of his hand. “I understand, and I’ll remember that for next time. Nothing else?”

Crowley shook his head, then snatched Aziraphale’s wrist and kissed it. “What about you? How was it from your side?”

“It took me a bit to find my groove, as they say. But once I did, it all went swimmingly.”

Aziraphale fed Crowley another pretzel and then popped one into his own mouth.

“I must admit,” he said when he’d swallowed, “today was the best sex I’ve ever had. Better than I ever imagined sex could be.”

“Which part of it?”

“Oh, all of it. It was all…” Aziraphale closed his eyes and tipped his head back, like he was reliving it, savouring it all over again. “I don’t have the word for it. ‘Transcendent,’ perhaps, but even that falls short, I feel.”

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed quietly. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” He kissed Aziraphale’s wrist again and then turned onto his side, nuzzling Aziraphale’s soft belly. “Do you need to open the bookshop tomorrow? Guess that might be hard actually, wouldn’t it, with the rearranging and all.”

“Oh Heavens, no.” Aziraphale sounded utterly scandalised. “Goodness, I think it’ll stay closed for another two weeks at least, and not for the reorganising at all. I’ve remembered why I don’t like to keep regular hours. My dear, all those customers…”

Crowley glanced up at him from the corner of his eye just in time to see Aziraphale screw up his face like he’d tasted something objectionably sour. “Not pleasant?”

“One of them brought her child with her, Crowley. Her _child_. Not that I have anything against children, you understand. In other circumstances, I’m really quite fond of them.”

“But not near your books,” Crowley said.

“No,” Aziraphale said emphatically.

“I was shocked you let me touch them today, to be honest.”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale frowned. “Why wouldn’t I? You have a lot in common with them, you know.”

Crowley snorted. “Because I’m ancient and one of a kind?”

“I was thinking precious and mine, but yes, those too.”

Crowley pressed his face into Aziraphale’s stomach, feeling so full of love and happiness he wouldn’t be surprised if he overflowed. “Yours, huh?”

“Always.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] For the Longest Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25998553) by [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion/pseuds/Literarion)


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